Hiroaki Hamada was born on November 27, 1950 in Maebashi, Japan. Coming from a judo background, he was one of the first trainees in the history of the New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW)  dojo. NJPW had been founded by Antonio Inoki in January 1972, and the league had its first show on 3/6/72. After being trained by Rikidozan's final student, Kotetsu Yamamoto, Hamada made his professional wrestling debut at the age of 21 at a NJPW show on 3/16/72 when he lost to Tatsumi Fujinami. Hamada's first 22 matches were against Fujinami, and of those matches, Hamada lost 20 and went to a 15-minute time limit draw twice. After losing matches against some different opponents, Hamada finally started winning some of his matches from July 1972 onwards. While Hamada won a decent amount of his matches during the mid 1970s, he was a young undercard worker who certainly was not one of the featured performers in NJPW. In the 1974 Karl Gotch Cup, which was the predecessor of the Young Lions Cup, Hamada finished only seventh out of the nine participants, with Masanobu Kurisu, Makoto (Don) Arakawa, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Takashi (Kengo) Kimura, Tatsumi Fujinami and Masashi Ozawa (Killer Khan) all ending with more points than Hamada, which showed that NJPW didn't see him as one of their potential featured performers for the near future.

Somewhere around June 1972, he had started working under the name Little Hamada, since he was only 5'6" tall and was approximately 200 lbs, while NJPW was a league mostly focused on heavyweights. It is generally believed that NJPW sent Hamada for excursion to Mexico because they felt he was too small. NJPW wasn't known for their junior heavyweights in the early and mid 1970s, and it wasn't until 1978, when Fujinami won the WWF Junior Heavyweight Title, that NJPW slowly started working on a junior heavyweight division. Mexican lucha libre had a strong emphasis on several of the different lighter weight divisions, which made Mexico a perfect location for Hamada to start coming into his own as a pro wrestler. Hamada had his first matches in Mexico in July 1975 for the newly formed league Lucha Libre Internacional (LLI), which was the first true rival of Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL). Hamada's excursion was a successful one, and Hamada even won the UWA World Middleweight Title and the UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Title. Hamada would get many more title wins throughout the rest of his career, but winning these titles in Mexico certainly gave him more credibility at that stage of his career. Most importantly, he had now started learning how to work Mexican-style wrestling, which would have quite an impact on the course of his career and the Japanese wrestling scene in future years. Hamada was the first Japanese wrestler to truly adopt and incorporate the Mexican lucha libre style into his work. Also, it was during this Mexican excursion that he started becoming known as El Gran Hamada after being well-received by the Mexican pro wrestling community. From 1979 onward, after Hamada returned from his big Mexican excursion, NJPW finally started booking Hamada more favorably. Hamada returned to Japan in February 1979, was now billed as Gran Hamada (instead of Little Hamada) in Japan, and started feuding with Perro Aguayo, a Mexican wrestler who was on his first Japanese tour, in a feud that would see them have many matches together in various Japanese and Mexican leagues from 1979 until the year 2000. Because of having family in Mexico, Hamada went back and forth between Japan and Mexico until the late 1990s, after which he seemed to spend more time in Japan. Two of Hamada's half-Mexican, half-Japanese daughters, Xochitl and Ayako, who were both born and raised in Mexico, eventually became wrestlers in 1986 and 1998 respectively. Ayako's career taking off in the ARSION league in 1998 is presumably one of the reasons why her father decided to start spending more time in Japan and less time in Mexico.

Hamada was an excellent athlete, and he was quite the spectacular high flyer for wrestling standards in the late 1970s and early 1980s. However, Shodai Tiger Mask (Satoru Sayama), was an even more spectacular and amazing athletic high flyer in that era. Of course, next to the 1981-1983 version of Tiger Mask, almost everyone would appear to be less impressive. This is perhaps why Gran Hamada's push in NJPW only went so far, and Hamada never really became the top star of their junior heavyweight division, despite giving Sayama a run for his money. After some internal problems in NJPW regarding finances, several wrestlers ended up leaving NJPW in the mid 1980s, including Hamada, who left in late 1983 and wouldn't return to NJPW until 1994. Hamada joined the newly formed Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF) in 1984, but his high flying lucha-influenced style didn't suit the direction of the league, a league that started out as a hodgepodge type of league that seemingly didn't truly have a clear identity yet, but by late '84 turned more into a shoot style league. Hamada was a member of the original roster of the UWF, but he only worked a handful of shows for UWF, and joined All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) in the summer of '84. Despite being part of AJPW for nearly two years, his mid 1980s run in AJPW certainly isn't the most memorable part of his career by any means, which probably has a lot to do with AJPW not really caring about wrestlers of Hamada's size, especially after Atsushi Onita's injury ruined the future plans the Babas had for their junior heavyweight division. Hamada's AJPW matches almost never seemed to make it to TV, despite sounding potentially promising on paper.

There are not many records available of Hamada's matches from 1986-1988 (and it appears he didn't even wrestle one match in 1987), and part of the reason for this is that he had become a trainer and referee for the joshi puroresu league Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (the original JWP), the first rival of All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (AJW). Due to internal struggles, the original JWP would eventually disband and be split up in two leagues, JWP Project (JWP) and Ladies Legend Pro-Wrestling (LLPW). Hamada ended up starting his own league. Hamada's league was at times known as Federacion Universal de Lucha Libre, Universal Lucha Libre, Universal Wrestling Federation and Hamada's UWF, but to avoid confusion, let's refer to this league as Universal. It was with the founding of Universal that the first true Mexican lucha libre style league in Japan was created. You could say this was the birth of lucharesu, a blend of Mexican and Japanese styles, which is something that would live on in the future with the creation of leagues like Michinoku Pro, Toryumon and Dragon Gate, which were leagues formed by Hamada's students.

Gran Hamada didn't only train two of his daughters, he trained (and/or helped train) many male and female wrestlers during the 1980s and 1990s, and most of them became well-known wrestlers, including Plum Mariko, Ultimo Dragon, Super Delfin, The Great Sasuke, Dick Togo, TAKA Michinoku and Kaz Hayashi (a.k.a. Shiryu) among others. However, Gran Hamada also was still a relevant in-ring performer himself during the 1990s and 2000s, as his in-ring work in Universal and Michinoku Pro was some of his best work. Universal stopped running shows at some point in 1994, and Hamada started wrestling for NJPW on a regular basis in August 1994, which meant that he started appearing at NJPW shows for the first time since 1983. While it was really interesting and useful watching Gran Hamada wrestle obscure luchadores in Universal, his NJPW run made it possible for him be included in match-ups featuring some of the biggest names in 1990s junior heavyweight wrestling. NJPW wasn't the only league Hamada wrestled for on a regular basis during the mid and late 1990s, he Hamada joined Michinoku Pro (MPW), which was a league founded by Sasuke. Hamada wrestled on several MPW cards in 1993-1995, but in March 1996, Hamada fully joined the promotion. Hamada participated in many of Michinoku Pro's top multi-person tag team matches, including the great 10-man tag from 10/10/96. 1996 and early 1997 MPW gave the world some of the best pro wrestling ever, and Hamada was one of the most loyal and reliable performers in MPW in the 1990s.

It appears Gran Hamada only worked a few matches in the United States, and they all happened in 1997 and 1998. Five of those matches took place at ECW shows, and one of them at a show of an indy league called Century Wrestling Alliance. Unfortunately, while it seemed the year 1997 started off relatively well, it was in 1997 that the MPW workers started drifting apart. Shiryu left MPW for Mexico and WCW. TAKA, Togo, Shoichi Funaki and MEN'S Teio all left for the American sports-entertainment league WWF, only to end up being treated like jobbers, despite being some of the most talented performers in the wrestling business at the time. In April 1999, Super Delfin left Michinoku Pro to start running Osaka Pro shows, and he took Noahiro Hoshikawa and Masato Yakushiji with him (they would be joined by Togo). Gran Hamada, however, remained loyal to Sasuke's MPW by continuing to work MPW shows throughout the late 1990s. Hamada also continued appearing regularly at NJPW shows in the meantime, and in 1999, he appeared in the NJPW Best of the Super Juniors tournament for the first time since 1995. In 2000, Hamada was once again booked as a BOSJ tournament participant. In 2002-2005, Hamada started appearing at AJPW shows for the first time since 1986. Hamada was still a very good worker overall in 2003, but it appeared that his very best years were now behind him, as he no longer stood out as much as he used to, and the quality of his matches seemed to rely more on the quality of the work of his opponents. Of course, there was no escape from that anyway, because, after all, Hamada had been wrestling since 1972 and was 52 years old in 2003, and everyone shows their age sooner or later. Hamada was still particularly effective in a tag team setting though, because that allowed him to contribute with spurts of intensity. From 2005 onwards, the main leagues he appeared in were leagues like Osaka Pro Wrestling, Muga/Dradition, Real Japan Pro Wrestling, Wrestling New Classic and Dotonbori Pro Wrestling. In the 2010s, Hamada started having less and less matches, which was not a surprise, since he was in his 60s. In the years 2016-2018, he wrestled only a few matches, and his final match took place in 2018 at a Michinoku Pro show on 9/28/18 at the age of 67, after wrestling over 600 different wrestlers and over 2400 matches in an illustrious pro wrestling career that lasted approximately 45 years.

Not only did Gran Hamada win many titles throughout his long career, Hamada also had quite an impressive luchas de apuestas (wager matches) record, as he won several hair vs. hair matches in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. On 9/12/91 in Universal, Hamada won a hair vs. mask match against Black Power, which meant Black Power had to unmask.

Why is it important to learn about Gran Hamada's career? Hamada is one of the most underrated wrestlers ever. As of this writing (and this article was originally written in November 2021), he has still not been inducted into any Hall of Fame of sorts, and this is ridiculous considering Hamada was a very influential and talented pro wrestler who had a very interesting career that started in 1972 and lasted until 2018 (and for a large number of those years, he was a very relevant worker). This is now being corrected, as hereby, from this day forward, Gran Hamada is an inductee of the Hall of Talent! He was a pioneer, since he was the first Japanese pro wrestler to truly master, adopt and incorporate the Mexican lucha libre style. One of his daughters, Ayako Hamada, is pretty much a household name among fans of international women's wrestling. Gran Hamada trained a large number of other well-known wrestlers as well, and he was directly and indirectly involved in the creation of several lucharesu leagues in Japan. Hamada was essentially the father of lucharesu.

Now let's have a closer look at a selection of more than 100 of Gran Hamada's most memorable matches... 

NJPW 4/5/79 Tokyo Taiikukan, UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Title Match: Gran Hamada vs. Babe Face 12:12. This is one of the earliest matches available of Gran Hamada's career. A little over a month prior, he had returned to Japan from his big excursion to Mexico where he learned how to work Mexican lucha libre. It was also in Mexico that Gran Hamada had won the UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Title. To emphasize that this was a title match of importance, they played the Mexican and Japanese national anthems prior to the match. The match started off with some old school mat wrestling sequences where both men tried to get the upper hand and didn't want the other to get an advantage for too long. The matwork was somewhat basic, but they were deliberate in their execution, and sold well for each other. Hamada would occasionally counter Face's holds. Then, for less than a minute, Gran Hamada started displaying a flurry of some really spectacular lucha offense, which he had most likely learned in Mexico. Babe Face was a solid rudo luchador and was a decent base for Hamada's offense. They went back to the mat and tried to do some more damage on each other's limbs. Face seemed to lose interest and started applying some rest holds. Gran Hamada seemed kinda okay with this, but at least he made sure the restmissions weren't lasting too long. Face took a bump over the top rope and Hamada hit a plancha from the top turnbuckle to the floor onto Face. This was a decent match, but it really was only memorable because of the minute or two where Hamada showed the spectacular lucha stuff he had learned in Mexico, as they didn't really get to make this an interesting match in between the highlights. Face was okay, but Hamada was very good, displaying his athleticism and showing that he was quite an advanced worker for 1979 standards. Hamada hadn't quite reached his peak yet though. **½ 

NJPW 4/3/80 Kuramae Kokugikan, UWA World Light Heavyweight Title: Gran Hamada vs. Babe Face 13:21. This 4/3/80 match was a bit more lively than their 4/5/79 match, but it was quite similar otherwise. Once again, it was Gran Hamada's athletic ability that provided the main highlights of the match. Babe Face was solid, but somewhat unspectacular. At least this time he acted a bit more like a rudo who was out there to accomplish something, unlike in the 4/5/79 encounter, in which he was more passive. Also, the overall movement in this match was quicker than in the 4/5/79 bout, and there was less down time. Hamada's plancha off the top to the floor was once again one of the main highlights of the match. There's only so much you can do with Babe Face though. It was a decent match that was fun to watch and Hamada's work looked very good. **¾ 

LLI 4/13/80 Naucalpan El Toreo: Gran Hamada & Satoru Sayama vs. Perro Aguayo & Babe Face 17:04. Satoru Sayama was the best worker in this match, closely followed by Gran Hamada. Perro Aguayo showed some good rudo attitude and was quite okay as a no-nonsense type of brawler. He certainly isn't known for his technical skills, but he's one of the more well-known brawlers in Mexican lucha libre history. Aguayo was able to take Hamada's offense quite well, which was a good thing, because they were in the middle of a long feud. Babe Face was his usual self, a solid rudo who was a decent base for his opponent's offense, but his own input certainly was nothing fancy, other than a pretty good missile dropkick. Aguayo executed his signature senton, and he showed some pretty good intensity, both when on offense and when selling. Since this took place in Mexico, this was a 2-out-of-3 falls match. The advantage of this being 2-out-of-3 falls is that the second fall was used to give the Mexican team some credibility without taking steam aways from the Japanese team. In the third fall, the Mexicans became more vicious, and the Japanese juiced. Hamada showed a lot of intensity when he fought back. This was on its way to potentially become more than just a pretty good match, due to the fire shown by both sides, with in particular Hamada and Aguayo putting this over like a war in the final stages of the match. However, the match ended a bit abruptly when the referees awarded the match to the Japanese team after Aguayo hit Hamada with a vicious low blow. This was a decent bout with a bit of a disappointing finish. **¾

NJPW 3/13/81 Fukuyama City Gymnasium: Gran Hamada vs. Anibal 9:50. This was Gran Hamada's first tour back in Japan in almost a year, as Hamada was in Mexico while his second daughter Ayako Valentina Hamada Villareal was born on Valentine's Day 1981. Anibal was quite okay for a 40-year old luchador who had been wrestling for almost twenty years. The main difference between Anibal and a luchador like Perro Aguayo is that Anibal appeared to be more of a serious wrestler. While Aguayo's style is hard to take seriously at times, Anibal is a bit more all business in his approach, and Anibal made a serious attempt at some technical wrestling. Also, Anibal's execution was quite a bit more crisp than that of a worker like Babe Face, for example. Gran Hamada sold a lot for Anibal, until he landed on his feet and hit a tope suicida onto Anibal. Hamada's momentum was short-lived, however, as Anibal hit a pescado onto Hamada. Anibal did quite well for himself, and Hamada showed he was a really good worker at the very least. Despite Anibal's valiant effort, Hamada eventually got the win. This was quite a fun junior heavyweight match, and the work was quite good, especially considering this was early 1981, which means this was still the pre-Tiger Mask era. *** 

NJPW 10/23/81 Naha Onoyama Gymnasium: Tiger Mask & Gran Hamada vs. Signo & Negro Navarro 3:28 shown. Along with El Texano, El Signo & Negro Navarro were known as Los Misioneros de la Muerte, and they were one of the main trios that helped popularize trios matches (six-man tag team matches) in Mexico in the early 1980s. In the 1970s, there was usually one trios match on a LLI card, but once Los Misioneros started becoming a trio in 1980, trios matches became so popular that by the mid 1980s, LLI cards and also EMLL cards often featured at least three trios matches (sometimes even four or five). It's a shame Texano isn't in this match, because he was the best worker of Los Misioneros. Gran Hamada bumped big for the rudos, and put them over as menacing foes. El Signo was a solid but unspectacular rudo. Negro Navarro was okay, but it's hard to figure out why people think he's a great luchador after watching footage of his work in the past four decades (1980s onward). This appeared to be a good match, but only three minutes were shown. ***

NJPW 11/5/81 Tokyo Kuramae Kokugikan: Gran Hamada vs. Tiger Mask 17:01. This was a very interesting match-up because these two wereJapanese workers who had come out of the NJPW dojo and had made a big impression in Mexico, learning the Mexican lucha libre way of working, and successfully incorporating this into their NJPW background-influenced style. Gran Hamada showed a lot of intensity and certainly gave Shodai Tiger Mask (Satoru Sayama) a run for his money. Both guys showed their great athleticism, and one of Hamada's coolest spots was landing on his feet after being on the receiving-end of a back body drop. Sayama was easily the best opponent Hamada faced during the 1980s, and this was probably one of Hamada's best singles matches from the 1980s (at least based on what is available at the moment). Tiger hit a few of his kicks, but he didn't seem to use a lot of striking for his offense in this match. Both workers did some submission holds, but they often didn't really lead to anything. At times, Tiger would try to find an interesting way to try to escape and counter a hold though. Both workers started hitting a suplex here and there, and the match became more intense. Despite them being tag team partners less than a couple of weeks ago, they really took it to each other here, which was clear to see when they had a heated slap exchange. Hamada hit a tremendous tope suicida, and followed it up with a plancha off the top to the floor. However, Tiger was able to move away and Hamada landed on the floor without hitting Tiger. This enabled Tiger to roll back into the ring. Hamada was such a tough opponent that Tiger was only able to get a count-out win over Hamada here. It was a bit of a disappointing finish to a somewhat disappointing match. It was a good match, but they didn't quite deliver the dream match you'd perhaps think it would have been. One of the reasons is probably Hamada and Tiger both being babyfaces, and Tiger's matches around that time were usually at their best when there was an opponent in the role of a true heel. Both workers ended up becoming legendary names in puroresu history, and it was interesting seeing both of them meet each other during the early stages of their respective primes. While Sayama is an all-time great pro wrestler, his run as Tiger Mask was relatively short, and even though it was a very influential run, he changed directions in his career, as he started focusing more on shoot style puroresu. Hamada, on the other hand, went on to continue shaping proto-lucharesu into the lucharesu of the modern era through his work in Universal and Michinoku Pro. ***¼  

LLI 2/14/82 Naucalpan El Toreo de Cuatro Caminos, UWA World Middleweight Title: Centurion Negro vs. Gran Hamada. The legendary Lou Thesz was the referee. Centurion Negro's strategy seemed to be keeping Gran Hamada on the mat as much as possible, as he was probably aware of Hamada's high flying capabilities. In the second fall, not much changed, as Centurion desperately tried to keep Hamada on the mat. Hamada eventually had enough and started trying to make this match more lively, which helped him to win the second fall. At some point, Centurion decided to join in on the fun and hit a tope suicida. Soon after this, Hamada hit a tope suicida of his own. This was a decent match, but for large portions of the match, not much interesting was happening. At least they were putting over that they were trying to beat each other and win a wrestling battle. Centurion appeared to be an adequate luchador, but not quite someone we need to start raving about right now. This was a decent match, but if anything, perhaps the most interesting aspect of this match was having the great Lou Thesz in the same ring as Gran Hamada, and it was nice to see a full-length version of a singles match Hamada worked in Mexico during the 1980s. **¾   

NJPW 4/21/82 Tokyo Kuramae Kokugikan, UWA World Middleweight & WWF World Light Heavyweight Title: Gran Hamada vs. Perro Aguayo 4:55 of 8:45. This was champion vs. champion, and the winner would be walking away with both belts. Gran Hamada showed his great athleticism and tremendous high flying skills. He landed on his feet after a moonsault attempt, and he hit a plancha off the top rope to the floor onto Perro Aguayo. Despite not being as nearly as impressive as Hamada was, Perro Aguayo was okay, and he hit a tope suicida to try to at least make up for the rest of his rather primitive-looking offense. Hamada scored the big win after he was able to leap onto the top rope, and he then twisted in mid air into a sunset flip on Aguayo. This appeared to be a bit better than their 3/26/81 match, but with less than five minutes shown of this 4/21/82 match, it's hard to say if it was really much better than decent. **¾ 

NJPW 4/30/82 Yamato Auto Body Gymnasium: Tiger Mask & Gran Hamada vs. Les Thornton & Perro Aguayo 10:00 shown. This was quite an interesting match. Tiger Mask spent most of the match selling. Les Thornton seemed a bit out of place here, but he was okay for a basic second-rate gaijin. Gran Hamada didn't play too much of a role until the final stages of the match when he started showing his incredible fast-paced lucharesu moves. Hamada was clearly an excellent worker in 1982, despite there unfortunately not really being any truly memorable Hamada matches available from that year. The final minute saw Hamada and Aguayo continue their feud with some cool-looking action. Despite Aguayo's limitations as a worker, he was familiar enough with Hamada to make his sequences with Hamada stand out as some of the best moments in the match. Aguayo missed a tope suicida intended for Hamada, and he hit Thornton instead. Hamada immediately hit a tope suicida of his own, and this one hit Aguayo. All four workers were brawling on the outside when the referee counted everyone out for the double count-out. It was a decent match with solid work, and everyone gave a good performance, but it wasn't necessarily anyone's best performance here. **¾

NJPW 1/14/83 Tokuyama City Gym: Gran Hamada & Tiger Mask & Kantaro Hoshino vs. El Texano & El Signo & Negro Navarro 13:25. Animal Hamaguchi, Rusher Kimura, Isamu Teranishi and Mike George attacked Tiger Mask before the match. Los Misioneros de la Muerte worked together as a unit, but their offense lacked stiffness, and didn't look impressive compared to that of the Japanese team. After selling most of the early portion of the match, Gran Hamada worked some cool-looking lucha sequences with all three members of Los Misioneros. Hamada was probably the second-most impressive worker in the match, behind Tiger, of course. The thing that set Hamada's offense apart from that of the Mexican team, was that while Hamada was also doing lucha, he was combining it with the intensity of puroresu. It's not a surprise that Hamada played a big role in the birth of lucharesu. Tiger worked some really spectacular sequences, in particular with El Texano, who was easily the best worker on his team. Kantaro Hoshino was an underdog who tried hard, but he didn't have anywhere near the athletic ability his two tag team partners here had. The finish came out of nowhere, but the work was generally very good throughout this match, and this was one of those rare matches in which Los Misioneros actually really lived up to their reputation as a legendary trio. ***½  

NJPW 2/3/83 Hokkaido Sapporo Nakajima Taiiku Center, NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title Match: Tiger Mask vs. Gran Hamada 17:19. This was disappointing when you consider these were two of the most spectacular babyfaces in the NJPW junior heavyweight division at the time. They spent a lot of time in holds that didn't really lead to anything, and Hamada lacked the energy he usually showed. Tiger Mask seemed fine with this, and he also didn't really do anything to change the direction of the match. At times, they'd do a nice looking lucha sequence, but then they'd go right back to the rest holds. The abundance of wear down holds wouldn't have been so much of an issue if there was more urgency shown. Things finally started picking up during the final two minutes, but it was already too late, since they hadn't spent the first 15 minutes very usefully at all. The work was decent overall, and these two were such excellent workers that this almost still was a pretty good match at times, but this match certainly was not as good as their 11/5/81 encounter and nowhere near as good as one would expect from these workers. **¾

NJPW 2/10/83 Gamagori Civic Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & Kuniaki Kobayashi vs. Tiger Mask & Kantaro Hoshino 13:10 shown. The match was joined in progress during the second fall. Unlike in his most recent singles meeting with Tiger Mask on 2/3/83, Gran Hamada showed a lot of fire. Tiger also seemed way more eager here than in the 2/3/83 match, and he showed quite a bit of that great ability of his. Kantaro Hoshino was the least impressive worker here (and there's no shame in that, since the other three are considered top talent), but he played his role of underdog babyface tag team partner well enough. Kuniaki Kobayashi was an underrated worker who was one of Tiger's main opponents. Hamada & Kobayashi desperately tried to unmask Tiger in an attempt to demoralize Tiger. This was a very good match with very good heat. The finish was spectacular with Tiger hitting a tope con giro that sent both him and Kobayashi over the guardrail. ***¾   

UWF 4/11/84: Gran Hamada vs. Perro Aguayo 13:17. Gran Hamada gave a strong performance, as his selling made Perro Aguayo look like a menacing foe. Whenever Hamada was on offense, he was excellent, although it felt like Aguayo was on offense way too much for this match to be considered anything more than just pretty good overall. Aguayo's offense wasn't very sophisticated at all, but at least he was solid in his role as brawling rudo. After the match, Los Misioneros de la Muerte (El Texano & El Signo & Negro Navarro), who were in Aguayo's corner, attacked Hamada, who ended up juicing after getting brutalized with a pair of scissors. This was a pretty good lucha match, which ironically happened at the first show held by the original Japanese UWF, but during these early stages, this league still wasn't quite fully developed as the shoot style UWF we think of when we hear the name UWF. ***

UWF 4/17/84 Tokyo Kuramae Kokugikan, WWF Light Heavyweight Title: Perro Aguayo vs. Gran Hamada 13:10. The first WWF Light Heavyweight Champion was crowned in NJPW on 3/26/81 in a match between Gran Hamada and Perro Aguayo, which was a tournament final. After that match between  Hamada and Aguayo, the title would be contested almost exclusively in Japan and Mexico. In August 1996, the title became part of NJPW's J-Crown after Michinoku Pro's Great Sasuke won a tournament to unify eight titles. At some point in 1997, the WWF remembered that they had this title after they had forgotten about it for over 16 years, and they wanted the title back. TAKA Michinoku won the title at a WWF event in December 1997, and the championship would be defended at WWF shows. WWF completely devalued the belt by giving jobber Duane Gill the title for over a year. Eventually, the title was completely deactivated in March 2002. Back in 1984, it was still a prestigious championship. Let's have a look at this UWF 4/17/84 match, which was one of only five matches Hamada wrestled in the original UWF. Aguayo was good in his role as brawling lucha rudo, and Hamada put over Aguayo's brutality very well. Hamada clearly knew how to make a match exciting, as was evident by his timing, and he knew when to switch from offense to defense while trying to enhance the quality of the match and make his opponent look good at the same time. Aguayo's viciousness made up for his lack of actual wrestling ability, which helped him to stay relevant in the international junior heavyweight wrestling scene at the time. Aguayo lost by DQ in the first fall, because started attacking Hamada with a pair of scissors, which he continued to do even after the referee rang the bell. In the second fall, we got to see some of Hamada's most spectacular offense, including the famous spot where he lands on his feet after being on the receiving-end of a back body drop attempt and a ferociously executed tope suicida. Hamada wasn't only about the flying though, as he hit some powerful looking forearm smashes and a brutal brainbuster. Things got more and more heated, and the crowd started chanting "Ha-ma-da!" Aguayo seemed to make quite an effort to try to bring as much to the table as he could. This match seemed to get progressively better with each minute, and the near-falls really helped make this even more of an exciting bout during the final stages. The finish was satisfying, despite this being decided after only two falls, which speaks volumes about how good this was. This was a really good match, significantly better than their 4/11/84 match. Also, this was one of Hamada's strongest singles match performances of his career, because in the two singles matches that were probably slightly better than this match (against Blue Panther on 11/13/90 and against Jushin Thunder Liger on 8/4/94), his opponents were arguably the ones that were slightly more responsible for the excellence of the respective matches. ***¾  

AJPW 9/12/84 Miyagi World's Strongest Junior Tag League Final: Gran Hamada & Mighty Inoue vs. Chavo Guerrero & Hector Guerrero 9:39. This was one of the few Gran Hamada matches from his AJPW run in the mid 1980s that made it to TV. Despite AJPW not really seeming to care for Hamada that much, the fans apparently cared as they were chanting: "Ha-ma-da!" For younger readers out there, the Chavo Guerrero in this match is Chavo Guerrero Sr., who was the brother of Hector, Mando and Eddy Guerrero, and he was the father of Chavo Guerrero Jr. Those who are familiar with some of his matches will know that Chavo (Sr.) was quite the solid old school wrestler. Hector Guerrero was a solid worker who was not afraid to put over some crazy gimmicks throughout his career. While the Guerrero brothers gave quite a decent performance here, they didn't really do anything to write home about either. Gran Hamada tried a cool-looking move off the second rope, but he slipped. Luckily, the Guerrero's covered it up quickly by dragging Hamada into his corner and continuing the match so the fans had no time to fully register the botch. Later in the match, Hamada completely redeemed himself by landing on his feet after hitting a moonsault attempt of the second rope. Despite the Guerrero brothers showing better teamwork, the underdogs scored the upset victory here. Mighty Inoue barely added anything to this match, but that didn't stop this match from being pretty good overall. However, other than the fun moments featuring Hamada's excellence, this wasn't more than just a pretty good match. This was definitely fun though, especially since this was a rare glimpse of Hamada's mid 1980s AJPW run. *** 

Universal 3/1/90 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & Lizmark vs. Perro Aguayo & Jose Luis Feliciano 4:50, 2:50, 8:30. This was the main event of the first ever Universal Pro-Wrestling event. Gran Hamada was the co-founder of this new league, and he truly embodied the blend of Japanese puroresu and Mexican lucha libre, since he excelled at both. It was good to see Hamada back again in full-time pro wrestling action, since it appears there's basically no footage available of his work in the second half of the 1980s. Like the true rudo that he was, Perro Aguayo destroyed the bouquet of flowers he received over the head of Hamada. Aguayo's offense wasn't too spectacular, as always, but he played his role as main event rudo quite well. Aguayo's tag team partner, Jose Luis Feliciano, was an adequate luchador, who didn't stand out, but also didn't take away from the match too much. Lizmark showed some good high flying skills, but Gran Hamada was the one who stole the show with his speed and agility. Of course, he did his signature spot where he landed on his feet after a back body drop attempt by Aguayo. The second fall was brief and wasn't that special, because it had the rudos in control a bit more, but at least Lizmark was able to hit some cool-looking offense. Things got a little chaotic in the third fall, and Aguayo even resorted to using a table as a weapon. The match started losing the momentum it had built up in the first fall even more now, and probably a big reason was the lack of interesting offense shown by the rudos. Luckily, Hamada decided to hit a tope suicida to wake everyone up again. Hamada was definitely the worker of the match, because the energy and enthusiasm he showed made his work stand out most. The other three were good in their respective roles and did well when you consider the difference in expectations you'd have from them. The finish was disappointing, as we got a lame count-out win for the rudos. Still, this was a pretty good lucha match overall, and it was a pretty good way to main event the first show of this new league. *** 

Universal 3/2/90 Nagoya Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium: Gran Hamada vs. Perro Aguayo 8:05, 6:38. Despite Perro Aguayo's offense being passable at best, his viciousness helped him put over as a worthy main event rudo here. Gran Hamada played the role of sympathetic top babyface quite well, which really helped when trying to take Aguayo's offense somewhat seriously. The first fall had a lot of action, including brawling on the outside of the ring and a ref bump. The finish of the first fall was lame, because the referee disqualified Hamada after thinking that Hamada had attacked him on purpose, while it was more a case of the ref being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The next fall dragged on initially because of Aguayo being on offense quite a bit. However, when Hamada fought back briefly, it seemed the action started picking up again. In the end, it was Aguayo who won. While this was pretty good overall, it was definitely not their best match against each other. ***

Universal 3/4/90 Higashimurayama Civic Sports Center: Gran Hamada & Yoshihiro Asai & Super Astro vs. Espanto Jr. & Shu El Guerrero & Jose Luis Feliciano 9:07, 6:36. Super Astro was quite impressive and entertaining because of his spectacular high flying ability. His bumping was quite good too. He was a short stocky guy, but he flew around gracefully. He was probably the most outstanding worker in this match. Hamada was excellent whenever he was in, displaying some of his excellent lucha libre skills. Yoshihiro Asai was quite determined in staying in control when he worked against Espanto Jr. on the mat. The matwork wasn't anything too fancy, but at least Asai was into what he was doing, so it didn't necessarily come across as filler. His flying was top-notch, as usual. The rudos were solid but unspectacular, with Shu El Guerrero being the one who did the most work for his team. He was quite a solid base for all the offense displayed by the tecnicos. Espanto Jr. was quite okay at taking offense, but that was about it when it comes to his contributions here. Jose Luis Feliciano failed to impress in this particular match. The tecnicos won two straight falls. The beginning of the second fall was a bit slower, as the rudos were in control for a bit. Overall, this was a decent match that was fun to watch. It possibly would have been a good match if the rudos would have been able to be more interesting during the second fall. The finish sequence was spectacular, thanks to the tecnicos. After the match, Perro Aguayo attacked Hamada to continue the story of their lengthy feud. **¾   

Universal 3/5/90 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA World Light Heavyweight Title: Gran Hamada vs. Perro Aguayo 6:54, 4:39, 7:54. These two were very familiar with each other, as they had been feuding since 1979. Perro Aguayo's brutality and primitive instincts made his aggressive offense quite effective. Gran Hamada's selling and countering helped make Aguayo's work look even better. Hamada won the first fall purely because he was a better wrestler technically, as he was able to survive Aguayo's onslaught. Aguayo's usefulness can't be denied, since this was actually a very good match, and Aguayo's performance was surprisingly good. In the third fall, Aguayo really started getting confident that this was going to be a victory for him, since Hamada was having a tough time. However, when Hamada fought back, we got to see some of the most spectacular moments of the match, including a torpedo-esque tope suicida by Hamada. Despite his short stature, Hamada comes across as powerful, and a big part in that is because of his intensity. A good example would be the way he executes a headbutt, which he makes look like he's putting all force behind it. Hamada successfully managed to defend his championship in this very good match that saw Hamada give one of his stronger singles match performances. ***½

WWA 1990 Gran Hamada & Yoshihiro Asai & El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas & Blue Panther & Fuerza Guerrera 7:20, 3:16, 3:45. This match presumably took place in WWA in the year 1990, as all sources simply say this took place in 1990. This match possibly took place in the month of April or May 1990, but this is simply a guess on my part. It was nice to see a Gran Hamada match from Mexico featuring other workers who could go in the ring. Hamada was able to work super fast lucha sequences with everyone, and showed that he was able to be an excellent in-ring performer in both Mexico and Japan at the time. The Mexican luchadores Hamada got to work with in this match were a lot more advanced than most of the luchadores he had to work with in the 1980s (at least, based on the matches that were available of Hamada's '80s work). We have to keep in mind that there's very little footage available of Hamada's work in Mexico from before the 1990s. Yoshihiro Asai and Blue Panther executed some beautiful fast-paced exchanges to start this match off in an excellent way.  Negro Casas and El Hijo del Santo stole the show in the first fall with their fast-paced lucha counters. One of the coolest spots in the match happened when Santo had Casas in La Tapatia (a.k.a. Romero Special), and Hamada jumped over them to execute a sunset flip on Fuerza Guerrera. Santo worked nice sequences with Fuerza. Of course, those two were pretty much arch-enemies. At some point in the match, Hamada and Casas worked at a lightning fast pace together. They didn't just show speed, they also showed intensity, and Hamada's headbutt on Casas certainly looked vicious. Overall, this was an excellent lucha libre match featuring six of the top names of 1990s lucha and everyone gave an excellent showing here. ****

Universal 6/1/90 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA World Light Heavyweight Title: Gran Hamada vs. Perro Aguayo 11:39. Perro Aguayo clearly tried to show as much intensity as he could in his attack on Gran Hamada in the early stages of the match, and Hamada sold it well. The first five minutes were solid, but action started really picking up after Hamada hit a nice plancha off the top rope to the floor onto Aguayo. Hamada hit a nice tope suicida. The good thing about this match was that Hamada was on offense more than Aguayo was. Whenever Aguayo was on offense, Hamada's selling helped a lot in putting over Aguayo's offense as lethal. Hamada landed on his feet after a back body drop attempt, after which Hamada took a big bump to the floor after a successful back body drop attempt by Aguayo, and Aguayo surprisingly followed this up with a tope suicida. Instead of hitting Hamada, Aguayo hit one of the workers at ringside, because Hamada was still down. The match got gradually more exciting after a solid start, and this was a very good match, but not quite as good as their 4/17/84 match. ***½ 

Universal 6/7/90 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & Perro Aguayo & Kendo vs. Texano & El Signo & Negro Navarro 9:18, 6:47, 4:40 of 6:55. This two-out-of-three falls match featuring some very well-known luchadores is a match true lucha aficionados will probably appreciate very much. Los Misioneros de la Muerte worked very well together, since they had been teaming together for a decade now. El Texano was easily the most impressive of the three, because the moves he did required more athleticism and talent. The other two were quite solid and good in their role as tag team partners of Texano though. On the other side, we had Gran Hamada teaming with arch-enemy Perro Aguayo. It seems these two had enough respect for each other after their battles that they decided to join forces and fight a strong unit. The Japanese crowd loved these workers, and it seemed this love inspired the workers to work even harder than they normally would. Kendo was an athletic talent who wasted some of his time trying to be a comedy wrestler, but his skills were good enough, and he kept the comedy to a minimum. Hamada worked really hard and was the best worker in the match, which says a lot about his excellence, because at this point, Hamada was a 39-year old man with 18 years of pro wrestling experience who was the top star of this league he co-founded. Despite not really having to prove himself anymore at this stage of his career, he decided to work super hard to not only challenge himself, but also to encourage the other workers to give the best they could at a big Korakuen Hall show like this with enthusiastic fans in attendance. In the second fall, Texano took a huge Jerry Estrada-esque bump to the floor after a back body drop by Aguayo. Kendo and Signo slowed the pace down a bit by playing to the crowd, but Kendo made up for it with his display of athleticism. In the third fall, we got the joy of witnessing Hamada and Texano battling it out for a few minutes. Hamada and Texano certainly stole the show in this very good match. ***¾  

Universal 11/13/90 Gunma: Gran Hamada vs. Blue Panther 14:57. For this super interesting match-up, Gran Hamada had Yoshihiro Asai in his corner, and Blue Panther had Brazo de Oro in his corner. Panther enjoyed mat wrestling, and this made Hamada focus a little bit more on technical wrestling than he normally would. Panther displayed his knowledge of different holds. Hamada knew he couldn't match Panther on the mat, so he started displaying his high flying skills in order to get the upper hand in this match. This gave Hamada a chance to start trying to get the upper hand on the mat. However, Panther was able to counter Hamada's holds, which meant Panther had the upper hand again. Hamada was now challenged to try to counter some of Panther's holds, which he was able to do at times. As excellent as Hamada was, Panther's work was arguably even slightly more impressive in this particular match than Hamada's work was. Later in the match, Hamada executed a twisting middle-rope somersault plancha to the floor (which kinda looked like a twisting somersault variation of the Asai moonsault), which showed he was now desperate, as he realized Panther was going to be tough to beat. Panther decided to show some aerial skills himself, but he missed an attempted moonsault when Hamada rolled out of the way. Hamada hit a powerful dropkick off the top rope to show how the high flying is done. Panther wanted to put Hamada away and almost pinned Hamada with a powerbomb. Hamada knew he had to act quickly to get a victory, and he managed to escape a double underhook suplex attempt and hit a German suplex for the win. This was a very enjoyable display of excellent wrestling by both men, and it was one of Hamada's best singles matches of his career. **** 

AJW 11/14/90 Yokohama Bunka Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & Yoshihiro Asai & Kendo vs. Brazo de Oro & Brazo de Plata & El Brazo. Universal would occasionally have joshi puroresu matches on their cards, but here we got the opposite, a Universal match at a joshi puroresu show. All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling was the biggest women's league in the world, and Universal was arguably one of the most entertaining men's puroresu leagues in the world at the time, so it was interesting to see a Universal match at AJW's Wrestlemarinepiad, which was a major show main evented by Bull Nakano defending her Red Belt in a steel cage against up-and-coming legend Aja Kong. Yoshihiro Asai's speed and agility was amazing in this match. Los Brazos aren't my favorites by any means, but in this match they kinda found a decent balance between being fun to watch and trying to be funny. A lot of their comedy stuff didn't get as big of a reaction as it would have gotten at a Universal show though. Gran Hamada showed flashes of greatness whenever he was in. He was one of the two best workers in this match, along with Asai. Kendo was just kinda there for the most part, but he hit an incredible tope suicida to redeem himself. Several other dives followed, including Asai's Asai moonsault and a surprisingly well-executed tope suicida by "Super Porky" Brazo de Plata. This was a pretty good match, but Los Brazos kinda made some parts of this match seem like they were just dragging on. However, the performances by Hamada and Asai made this worth watching. ***

Universal 3/9/91 Fukushima: Gran Hamada & Yoshihiro Asai & El Hijo del Santo vs. Jose Luis Feliciano & Shu El Guerrero & Black Terry 6:55, 3:25, 5:00. This match had a lot of fast-paced and exciting lucha sequences. Hamada's team brought great offense that Los Temerarios were solid bases for, and took well. Jose Luis Feliciano hit a surprisingly cool tope con giro in the second fall. The third fall initially saw the rudos in control with some brawling, which slowed the match down a bit. Once the tecnicos were on offense again, things picked up again. Hamada hit a twisting middle-rope somersault plancha to the floor. Hamada's student, Yoshihiro Asai, hit a perfectly executed quebrada on El Guerrero. Just to make sure he would get the victory, Asai followed this up with a simple leg drop, which kinda seemed funny after executing a spectacular quebrada. The leg drop did give Asai the win though, just like the leg drop gave the champion of a certain sports-entertainment company lots of wins in the 1980s. But, of course, in the case of the 1980s sports-entertainment champion (Hulk Hogan), the leg drop was always preceded by a big boot, never a quebrada. ***¼ 

Universal 3/10/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA Tag Team Tournament Semi-final: Gran Hamada & Perro Aguayo vs. Yoshihiro Asai & Solar I 8:25. The match was at its best when we had the battle between the teacher, Gran Hamada, and the student, Yoshihiro Asai. One of the highlights was Asai hitting the Asai moonsault on Hamada. Perro Aguayo didn't really play much of a role in this match, other than being by Hamada's side, which was ironic since he used to have heated battles with Hamada in the past. Solar I gave a good performance, but it would have been nice to see him wrestle Hamada a bit more, as he was mostly wrestling Aguayo in this match. It was a pretty good match, but it was mostly interesting because Hamada and Asai were wrestling each other. ***

Monterrey 1991 Monterrey Arena Coliseo: Gran Hamada & Huracan Sevilla vs. Blue Panther & Guerrero Negro 8:40, 4:20, 7:00. Gran Hamada's team were the tecnicos (babyfaces), and Blue Panther's team were the rudos (heels). Huracan Sevilla and Guerrero Negro were quite okay, but the match truly become joyful to watch whenever Hamada and Panther were battling each other. A cool little detail was Sevilla rolling Hamada out of the ring after Hamada had taken the pin in the second fall. In the third fall, Hamada tried to unmask Panther. Sevilla and Negro were having their own battle, which culminated when Sevilla hit a tope suicida on Negro. The match ended soon after this when Hamada pinned Panther. ***

Universal 11/7/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & MASA Michinoku & Monkey Magic Wakita & El Matematico vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Canelo Casas & Blue Demon Jr. & El Sismo 15:10 MASA Michinoku (the future Great Sasuke), had made his debut at Universal's first ever show on 3/1/90, and this was one of the very first (if not the first) of many times that he would be teaming with Gran Hamada. MASA and Monkey Magic (the future Super Delfin) gave quite a decent showing for workers of their experience level. It was interesting to see Hamada battle Dr. Wagner Jr., and whenever they wrestled each other, it resulted in some of the best moments of the match. Canelo Casas (the future Heavy Metal) was fun to watch, as he moved around the ring quickly and showed a lot of potential. El Sismo, a mediocre rudo, was the least impressive worker in the match. El Matematico was a luchador who had quite a good amount of success in the 1970s and 1980s. Here in 1991, he was a 48-year old luchador who was no longer in his prime, and it didn't help he was mostly facing Sismo. Blue Demon Jr. didn't really play much of a role in this match, but his father, Blue Demon (Sr.), was the man who had unmasked El Matematico in Mexico in 1989. Here for this Universal tour in Japan, Matematico was wearing his mask, which more than likely would have been considered blasphemy in Mexico. Near the finish, we got to see several dives, as Hamada hit a pescado, Wakita hit a top-rope plancha to the floor, and the most impressive dive was MASA's tope con giro. The match ended soon after those dives when Canelo scored a pinfall over Matematico after a moonsault. Overall, this was a pretty good match that was fun to watch, and the action ranged from okay to really good, depending on who was in the ring. ***

Universal 11/14/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Gran Hamada & MASA Michinoku & Monkey Magic Wakita 9:52; 4:18; 5:02. Dr. Wagner Jr. was quite decent in this match. He brought a lot of force to this match. MASA Michinoku was a green and maskless Great Sasuke. Monkey Magic Wakita was a green and maskless Super Delfin. El Texano was a solid tag team partner for Silver King, as usual. We didn't get to see much of King until the second half of the match though. Even though King didn't quite hit his peak as an overall worker yet by this time, he did enough good things that clearly indicate that he was at least good or even very good at the time. King won the match after a beautiful moonsault. Gran Hamada was the best worker of the match, as he showed a lot of intensity and performed some nice-looking spectacular moves. Despite being inexperienced, MASA was eager to impress and executed a tremendous space flying tiger drop. Overall, this was a very good lucharesu trios match that perfectly embodied the enjoyable wrestling this league presented. The fans enjoyed the match so much that they threw money into the ring after the match was over. ***½

LLI 12/22/91 Naucalpan El Toreo: Silver King & El Texano & Gran Hamada vs. Headhunter I & Headhunter II & Rambo 3:50, 2:27, 4:00. This match was way better than it looked on paper, since the rudos in this match weren't exactly known for their workrate, but they were able to give an exceptional performance here (at least for their standards). They were all able to keep up with the pace and help with keeping the action going. The Headhunters gave one of their best performances, as they worked hard and did a bunch of cool spots that looked impressive, especially considering their size. Even Rambo, who was usually mediocre at best, was quite okay here and wasn't in the way like he usually would have been, as he clearly tried his best and gave one of his better performances. Instead of the dull brawling we'd usually see from these rudos, they actually tried to wrestle to the best of their ability. The tecnicos in this match, Gran Hamada, Silver King and Texano were obviously the best workers in this match, and they all gave a strong performance here, which was the main reason this match was pretty good, as without them being as sharp as they were, this wouldn't have been this enjoyable. King and Texano, Los Cowboys, showed why they were a top-notch tag team, and Hamada fit in excellently. All three tecnicos were excellent, but Texano was arguably the worker of the match (with Hamada and King not far behind). ***

Universal 1/19/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA Tag Team Title: Gran Hamada & Kendo vs. Silver King & El Texano 10:54 of 15:00. Silver King & El Texano showed their capabilities as a team and dominated the match early on. Los Cowboys showed why they were a top tag team, while Gran Hamada & Kendo seemed more like two random workers put together. Kendo was a luchador from the Dominican Republic, who actually started becoming more well known and popular because of his tours for this league, as the Japanese crowds seemed to love him. He wasn't the most all-round worker, but he was athletic and the crowd liked his tendencies to mix in quite a bit (too much) of comedy into his work. King and Hamada provided the best work in this match. Hamada always seemed to mix things up, as you'd never really know what he would come up with in his matches; and he always seemed to give a strong effort. This made him an exciting worker to watch. As the match progressed, the spots got more spectacular. Hamada landed on his feet after he was on the receiving-end of a back body drop attempt; and King took a Jerry Estrada-esque bump to the floor. Texano executed a piledriver on Hamada on the floor, and it was sold well. In the end, Los Cowboys were simply too strong of a tag team, and they deservingly became the new tag team champions. ***¼ 

LLI 2/16/92 Naucalpan El Toreo: Silver King & El Texano & Gran Hamada vs. Negro Casas & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Tigre Canadiense 4:30; 2:30; 3:25. Silver King was one of the best workers in the match, and as good as his performance was, the two most outstanding workers in this match were Negro Casas and Gran Hamada. Dr. Wagner Jr. seemed to be inspired by these three excellent workers, and tried his best to do his part in the match. Wagner was a solid base for the opposing team's offense. El Texano wasn't quite on the level of Silver King and Gran Hamada, but he gave a pretty good performance himself. Tigre Canadiense (Spanish for Canadian Tiger) was Canadian wrestler Mike Lozanski. He certainly isn't one of the 30 best Canadian wrestlers ever, but he was adequate and tried. He lacked the flexibility needed for a lot of the things he tried to do, making his work come off as very clunky. However, Lozanksi didn't drag the match down too much, since he understood his role as the odd one out and tertiary member of his team. Overall, this was a good 10-minute match with plenty of exciting action. ***¼

LLI 2/23/92 Naucalpan El Toreo: Silver King & El Texano & Gran Hamada vs. Negro Casas & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Rambo. 3:00; 4:10; 10:00. The work was good whenever Rambo wasn't in, as he was a luchador who was mediocre at best. Perhaps it was Rambo dragging down the match (and at least he wasn't as bad as he would become in later years), but it took a while for the match to get beyond just some brawling and triple-teaming. As a result of the brawling, Gran Hamada juiced. Eventually, this turned into a good match. Negro Casas was the worker of the match, and he worked exceptionally well against Hamada and Silver King. Casas' hard work and bumping stood out most. He added a lot to this match, but without overshadowing the others. Hamada's speed and agility helped add even more exciting action to the match. Dr. Wagner Jr. was on the receiving-end of some of Hamada's moves, including a huracarrana. Wagner and El Texano did well for themselves whenever it was their moment to do their part in this match. Texano was solid and reliable, and he was there when needed. Wagner hit some effective offense, and was also a solid base for the opposition's offense. The third fall had more fast-paced work than the first two falls. King showed his agility and his moves looked slick. They certainly made up for the somewhat generic brawling in the first two falls by pulling all the stops in the third fall. The referees eventually lost control and deemed it a no-contest. ***¼    

Universal 3/14/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Gran Hamada & El Hijo del Santo & Dos Caras 11:00 of 13:48 shown. The action was pretty much non-stop with everyone trying hard. Dos Caras probably stood out least, especially since this usually isn't the type of match he excels at (and he was somewhat inconsistent as a worker most of the time anyway), but he still showed some good moves. Gran Hamada may not have been the most graceful flyer, but his flying moves always look effective. Hamada was definitely a worker who stood out in this match. Silver King & El Texano bumped around very well for the opposition. El Hijo del Santo knew his role, and he knew exactly when it was the right time to add something to the match. He certainly was a smart trios match worker. The high pace combined with the high-quality wrestling made this a memorable match. After the match was over, the fans stormed towards the ringside area to shake the wrestlers' hands and ask them for autographs. ***½ 

LLI 5/8/92 Nezahualcoyotl Arena Neza: Gran Hamada & El Hijo del Santo & Solar I vs. Negro Casas & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Babe Face 6:50, 2:25, 3:55. Dr. Wagner Jr. and Solar I started the match quite well, as they made a good effort to have an interesting opening matwork segment. When Solar is in there with someone who is in the mood to wrestle technically, Solar can be one of the more interesting luchadores to watch. Negro Casas was arguably the worker of the match, because he showed so much energy and he did his best to really put this match and everyone in it over. Gran Hamada and Negro Casas showed a lot of fire when they battled each other, even though their battle was far too short. Casas and Solar showed some top-notch lucha when they wrestled each other; everything they did was wrestled really smoothly. Hamada also had the opportunity to battle his old nemesis Babe Face for a bit. It kinda felt like Hamada wasn't in the ring as much as hoped though, but at least he got to score the winning pinfall in the third fall. Face's work was quite similar to his work in the late 1970s/early 1980s, as he certainly wasn't very graceful, and he was the least impressive worker in this match, but he was quite okay in his role of trying his best to put over the superheroes. El Hijo del Santo was the graceful tecnico he always is, and he really showed he wanted to beat the rudos here. In the third fall, the tecnicos showed more aggression, as they had to overcome the aggression shown by the rudos. This was a pretty good match and very enjoyable while it lasted, but it was too short to be really satisfying, since it would have been nice to see these six workers go at it a bit more. ***¼ 

LLI 6/5/92 Nezahualcoyotl Arena Neza: Gran Hamada & Eddy Guerrero & Villano III vs. Scorpio Jr. & Scorpio & Shu El Guerrero 3:30, 6:19, 4:00. The first fall was mostly just generic lucha brawling, thanks to the rudos being in control. In the second fall, Eddy Guerrero showed some of his tremendous athleticism and high flying skills, and he was actually the most impressive worker of the match. Perhaps his recent tour of New Japan had given him newfound energy. Villano III gave a solid performance. Scorpio was okay-ish for his standards, and his son was quite decent. Shu El Guerrero was okay. Gran Hamada wasn't nearly in this match as much as hoped, but at least that meant the up-and-coming star Eddy Guerrero got some more time to shine. Overall, this was a fun match to watch, as the work was generally good and all the workers in this match were into what they were doing. Hamada's team got the deserving victory, so that was another good thing about this match. ***

Universal 6/21/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & Dos Caras vs. Los Villanos IV & V 11:22. Los Villanos were determined to beat Gran Hamada's team. Los Villanos IV & V were quite a decent tag team, and they showed a surprisingly good amount of intensity. They were quite good at bumping and selling in this match. Hamada and Dos Caras had to resort to hitting dives in order to get things going in their favor after Los Villanos did really well for themselves in the beginning stages of the match, and it seemed like Los Villanos were working extra hard to impress the Japanese audience. Hamada showed the most intensity for his team, but Caras was definitely a useful tag team partner for him, and Caras hit a nice tope suicida.This was an enjoyable fast-paced lucha match that had non-stop action from start to finish. ***¼ 

Universal 11/23/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada vs. The Great Sasuke 9:05. The teacher vs. the student. The timing of this match was perfect, because one of Gran Hamada's most promising students, The Great Sasuke (formerly known as MASA Michinoku), was about to start promoting shows for his own recently founded league, Michinoku Pro, which would be a continuation of what Hamada had built up with Universal. Hamada's approach in this match was that of the teacher wanting to toughen up his student, and making sure the student is ready before embarking on a big adventure. Sasuke proved that he was more than ready, as he hit a perfectly executed Asai moonsault, which was a move popularized by one of Hamada's other top students, Yoshihiro Asai (a.k.a. Ultimo Dragon) among other spectacular moves. One of the main differences between MASA Michinoku and Great Sasuke was that Sasuke was more of a daredevil high risk taker than his previous self was. Even though Sasuke had been wrestling as Great Sasuke for a few months at that point, it felt like this was like the final boss he had to go through before he was able to unlock the next level. ***¾    

Universal 3/13/93 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Title Match: Gran Hamada vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. 10:04 of 10:35. When Dr. Wagner Jr. tried to keep Gran Hamada on the mat, Hamada made sure to try to get out of the position he was in by trying to fight back and countering holds. Wagner was up for the task though, and he saw Hamada's fighting spirit as a challenge to make things as hard as possible for Hamada. Wagner, who proved to have more technical skills than he had previously shown in Universal and LLI, had the advantage whenever the match went to the mat, but Hamada had the advantage when there was a chance to do some high flying. These were two excellent pro wrestlers who put over quite well that they were trying to win this pro wrestling contest. It was a very good match, but it would have been nice to see these two go at it for more than just ten minutes, as it seemed they were just getting into the groove when the match hit the ten-minute mark. ***½

NJPW 8/3/94 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan: Gran Hamada & Dean Malenko vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & El Samurai 16:13. On 4/16/94, New Japan Pro-Wrestling hosted the Super J-Cup, which was a tournament featuring some of the best junior heavyweight talent from all over the world. Apparently, Gran Hamada was supposed to be one of the participants, and he wanted to participate, but Hisatsune Shinma (the son of Hisashi Shinma), who was one of the main people involved with Universal behind the scenes, was against this idea (because Hamada was going to have to do a job). This behind the scenes struggle meant that Hamada was not able to participate in the tournament. Universal stopped running shows after this dispute, which was fitting since Universal appeared to be on its last legs anyway, unfortunately. However, Hamada joined Michinoku Pro, which was a league founded by one of his students, The Great Sasuke. Michinoku Pro wasn't the only league Hamada wrestle for on a regular basis during the mid and late 1990s, because, despite not partaking in the Super J-Cup, Hamada started wrestling for NJPW on a regular basis anyway in August 1994, which meant that he started appearing at NJPW shows for the first time since 1983. The 8/3/94 tag match started off with Hamada and Liger battling each other. Hamada showed a lot of energetic high flying skills for a 44-year old wrestler with over 20 years of pro wrestling experience. The match slowed down quite a bit when Dean Malenko entered the ring. El Samurai was his usual hard-working self. Just a couple years earlier, he was one of Liger's main opponents, but in the mid 1990s, Samurai started excelling in his role as Liger's right-hand man in tag matches like this one. When El Samurai wrestled Malenko, Samurai focused on working over Malenko's left leg. Liger took note and continued that attack on Malenko's left leg. At some point in the match, Hamada executed the Silver King dive (Silver King's signature plancha off the second rope to the outside onto the floor) on Samurai. The match was at its best whenever Hamada and Liger wrestled each other. One of the coolest moments in this match took place when Liger and Samurai hit a double flying headbutt on Hamada. However, Hamada survived and worked quite a good minute against Samurai before scoring the pin over Samurai. This was a good match, but it was basically a preview of the singles meeting between Hamada and Liger the next day. ***¼ 

NJPW 8/4/94 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan: Gran Hamada vs. Jushin Thunder Liger 16:49. The match started off with a bang, as these junior heavyweight legends showed a lot of intensity early on, and Gran Hamada showed he was still in his prime as an in-ring performer. Hamada hit some good-looking and effective flying moves. After the hot start, the match slowed down quite a bit, but the quality of the work was always very good. Hamada kept Jushin Thunder Liger on the mat for a bit, but the matwork wasn't super interesting. Hamada used a few restmissions in between the more lively action. Hamada's offense was a lot more interesting when he was flying, which he confirmed when he hit a nice flying shoulder block off the top rope. Hamada was in control for quite a while, so it was time for Liger to do something back before Hamada was going to do too much damage. Liger fought back, and he was pacing himself, focusing more on deliberate execution and effectiveness, not so much on flashiness. Liger started attacking Hamada's knee, and Hamada sold it well. Liger applied a lot of pressure when executing a figure-four leglock, which made Hamada scream in pain. Liger did further damage by powerbombing Hamada on the floor. Hamada was hobbling around like the broken warrior that he was. However, when Hamada saw the opening to do something drastic back, he hit a second-rope twisting somersault plancha onto Liger on the floor. The action got more exciting, as Liger hit a koppo kick, which he followed up with a top-rope plancha onto Hamada on the floor. Liger hit a tremendous flying headbutt. Whatever Liger did, it would not be enough to put Hamada away. Hamada proved his toughness, endured all of Liger's offense and hit a huracarrana for the win. This was arguably Hamada's best singles match of his career. One of the big reasons why is Liger's greatness, of course. Hamada clearly understood this was his opportunity to have a big memorable singles match, and he did the best he could. Singles matches aren't Hamada's main strength, but he gave a strong performance here. Liger's great mind for weaving things together and turning things into a memorable match helped Hamada achieve that excellent singles match he was hoping for. The downtime wasn't much of an issue, since they would always keep picking up the pace again, and that way it never felt like the match ever really dragged on. Also, this match felt like a big match, because they put everything over as important. Even during the slower parts, there was still somewhat a sense of urgency, as paradoxical as it may sound. As a matter of fact, this was Hamada's first singles match back in NJPW since 1983, and it was a match against the #1 junior heavyweight in Japan at the time at one of the most legendary pro wrestling venues ever, and they were able to capture that vibe and translate it into their work. Liger did an excellent job of making sure this would be a match of high quality, but he also left room for Hamada to write his part of the song, so to speak. Of course, next to being a smart wrestler, Liger was also good at being a great wrestler with impressive athletic skills. Liger's ability combined with Hamada's ability made this a really interesting junior heavyweight bout that lived up to its expectation. This was possibly Hamada's best singles match of his career. ****

NJPW 9/19/94 Kanazawa Industrial Exhibition Hall #1: Norio Honaga & Gran Hamada vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & El Samurai 11:54. Whenever Gran Hamada and Jushin Thunder Liger met in a match, it was usually magical. This match featured several dives. Hamada was involved in quite a few interesting tag team matches in NJPW at the time. Whenever Hamada wasn't in this match, the match quality went down quite a bit. El Samurai worked hard and showed why he is one of the most underrated workers of the 1990s. Hamada, Liger and Samurai were showing off their excellence, but Honaga didn't want to be left behind, so he hit a solid tope suicida to show that he also cared. Liger was really unselfish here, allowing the others to show off their stuff. Liger and Samurai hit a beautiful double flying headbutt on Honaga. It was nice to see Hamada get the pin for his team over Samurai. Three days later, at Miyagi-ken Sports Center in Sendai, Gran Hamada & Tatsumi Fujinami faced Wild Pegasus and Masahiro Chono, but unfortunately there's only 41 seconds of video footage available of that rare match from 9/22/94. ***¼ 

NJPW 10/9/94 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, Super Junior Tag League: Gran Hamada & Norio Honaga vs. TAKA Michinoku & Super Delfin 13:11. TAKA Michinoku was the worker of the match. He worked the majority of the match for his team, and he was the one who worked harder and better than anyone else in this match. Super Delfin didn't add too much to the match, but he was fine whenever he was in the ring, and he executed a nice plancha to the floor onto Norio Honaga near the end of the match. Honaga was okay, but he was being his usual self, slow and basic, with a somewhat grumpy and heelish expression on his face. Gran Hamada was the second-best worker in the match, and he added a lot of intensity to the match. When TAKA and Hamada worked against each other, it resulted in some of the best moments of the match. It's a shame that TAKA, after all the effort he put into this match, went for a springboard plancha to the floor, but then tumbled onto the floor instead of hitting the move he was going for. Hamada helped TAKA back into the ring and pinned him after a couple of moves. This was a decent match that wasn't a career highlight for any of these workers, but the work shown by TAKA and Hamada made it worth watching. **¾ 

NJPW 10/18/94 Okayama-ken Taiikukan, Super Junior Tag League Semi-final: Gran Hamada & Norio Honaga vs. The Great Sasuke & Black Tiger II 9:09 of 11:42. This match gradually got more action-packed. There was some good fast-paced wrestling. Norio Honaga was the least spectacular worker in this match, but he did well for himself, making sure he'd contribute decently. Great Sasuke & Black Tiger II (Eddy Guerrero) showed good teamwork, which made it not a big surprise that they would make it to the final. Honaga worked over Sasuke's leg a bit, but Guerrero came to his tag team partner's rescue. Sasuke was really good, especially when he was flying and kicking. Gran Hamada provided the best work for his team, and the work was particularly slick when he wrestled Guerrero, who worked very smoothly. In the end, it kinda seemed like a relatively easy victory for Sasuke and Guerrero. ***¼ 

MPW 12/17/94 Tokushima Shimin Taiikukan: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke vs. SATO & Shiryu 16:35 of 17:40. SATO was the future Dick Togo, and Shiryu was Kaz Hayashi. Here we got to see Gran Hamada make another appearance in Michinoku Pro, the league founded by The Great Sasuke. Hamada didn't appear in MPW that often in 1994, since he mostly wrestled in NJPW that year. Sasuke, SATO and Shiryu were all trained by Hamada. Great Sasuke showed his tremendous speed for a bit, but the general pace of this match was more deliberate than high. SATO & Shiryu worked well together as a team, and gave the superstar team of Hamada & Sasuke a tough time. Sasuke showed some aggression when he had Shiryu on the mat, and Shiryu was able to turn the tables (not literally, since they wrestled a clean match, and no actual tables were used). After displaying a good amount of struggle in their battle on the mat, Shiryu and Sasuke executed fast-paced lucha sequences. Once SATO was tagged in, he continued where Shiryu had left off. While on the apron, Hamada looked on like a proud father, the father of lucharesu. In the ring, Hamada was all business and contributed with his intensity and strong execution. Every move he did had a certain sternness. The match slowed down a bit when Sasuke was selling while being worked over by the opposition. At some point, it was decided that it was time to start hitting dives. Shiryu, Sasuke and SATO all hit nice dives to the outside. In the end, Hamada was able to pin Shiryu for the win. The work was good throughout the match, but it seemed they saved all the big spots for the final portion of the match. It was a good match, but not really significant, especially compared to what these guys would be able to deliver a bit later on in that decade. ***  

NJPW 2/3/95 Hokkaido Sapporo Nakajima Taiiku Center: Gran Hamada & Koji Kanemoto vs. El Samurai & Shinjiro Otani 14:12. It took a while for the match to become interesting. Perhaps it had something to do with the wrestlers needing a bit of time to get used to referee John "Pee Wee" Moore's style of refereeing. Either way, in the early stages of the match, it almost seemed like they were just pretending that they were not killing time. Koji Kanemoto and Shinjiro Otani worked against each other during the first couple of minutes. The action was good, but it felt like they were going through the motions a bit. Gran Hamada was tagged in and worked over Otani's arm a bit. El Samurai and Kanemoto then wrestled each other, which resulted in some pretty solid action with some sense of struggle. Kanemoto and Otani ended up working against each other again briefly. Six minutes into the match, Otani and Hamada were the next pairing, and that's when the action started picking up. They turned up the pace and hit crisply executed moves on each other. This seemed to motivate the others, as Kanemoto was the next one to step up his game a bit. Once El Samurai was tagged in again, he showed his eagerness to help contribute more to the match as well. The final two minutes had the energetic junior heavyweight wrestling that made the match more worthwhile. We ended up seeing some nice high flying action. Overall, this was a decent match that had some really good moments. **¾ 

NJPW 2/17/95 Hamamatsu City Gym: Gran Hamada & Koji Kanemoto vs. El Samurai & Shinjiro Otani 12:44. This was better than their 2/3/95 match, because it was more energetic from the start, and they didn't just wait for the last few minutes to make this interesting. All four workers worked hard and clearly tried to make this good. While Shinjiro Otani was very impressive during the mid 1990s, when you look at his work from an overall career perspective, it becomes clear that Koji Kanemoto had a much more impressive career overall from an in-ring perspective, since Otani was only excellent for a few years before New Japan turned him into a heavyweight, and didn't really do anything of note after those few peak years. Here in 1995, both were definitely showing their improvement and both workers were eager to grow more. Hamada brought a lot of experience into the mix here, but he was also able to be very impressive with his bursts of energetic offense. It appears that it was around this time that Hamada started adding the swinging DDT off the second rope to his repertoire. In this match, El Samurai focused more on effectiveness and not so much on flashy offense. He put it over well that he was giving his opponent a rough time when he was tagged in. He was also able to put over his opposition's offense quite well through solid selling. Samurai wasn't necessarily strong at carrying in the sense of providing the match with various stories, as his matches would usually benefit from him being in there with someone who could give the match direction. However, Samurai was able to improve the quality of most any match from a sequences and counters perspective, and his ability to keep things going without needing too much focus on himself is an oftentimes overlooked role he excelled in. The final minute or so of this match gave the viewers the satisfying conclusion to this junior heavyweight tag team match, which was a good match from start to finish. Even though this wasn't a top career highlight for any of these four, this was a match that was certainly worthwhile. ***¼  

NJPW 4/13/95 Nagaoka City Kosei Kaikan: Gran Hamada & Koji Kanemoto vs. Wild Pegasus & Shinjiro Otani 15:13. The feud between Koji Kanemoto and Shinjiro Otani continued, and they were the ones starting off this match. They both were the main focus of each other in this match, as they were trying to outdo each other. Wild Pegasus (Chris Benoit) was at the peak of his career and worked super smooth sequences with Gran Hamada. Pegasus showed a lot of intensity and explosiveness. Pegasus and Otani showed excellent teamwork, which was no surprise, since they had won the junior heavyweight tag tournament in October 1994. Despite their underwhelming 2/19/95 singles match, Hamada and Otani worked a few good sequences together here, probably because this time they only had to work brief segments together. Whenever it seemed like an appropriate time for it, we got to see some dives in this match. It was good to see they didn't save all the excitement for just the final minutes, like sometimes tends to happen in NJPW junior heavyweight matches. Kanemoto and Otani had some more heated exchanges, and everyone seemed to be fired up with a desire to beat the opposition. While Hamada gave an excellent performance, it felt like he was the least featured performer here, since Kanemoto and Otani were the center of attention with their feud, and Pegasus, who was great whenever he was in and probably the best worker in the match, was the one who really made the Pegasus vs. Hamada sequences look extra crisp. Overall, this was a very good and very enjoyable junior heavyweight tag team match. ***¾  

NJPW 4/23/95 Okinawa Convention Center: Gran Hamada & El Samurai vs. Koji Kanemoto & Shinjiro Otani 13:55. Koji Kanemoto and Shinjiro Otani had a singles match against each other on 4/16/95, and it seems that somehow solved the problems they had with each other, for now. This 4/23/95 match missed the intensity of the 4/13/95 match, because here we had Kanemoto and Otani teaming with each other instead of fighting each other, and the explosiveness of Wild Pegasus was also missing. Gran Hamada and El Samurai showed strong teamwork, and it was clearly not the first time these two had teamed. Unlike the 4/13/95 match, Hamada seemed to be able to put his stamp on the match a bit more. Samurai gave a solid performance, and he was always there to come to Hamada's aid. Despite not being the most spectacular guy around, Samurai's work was logical, and he definitely contributed quite a bit. His role in the NJPW junior heavyweight division gets oftentimes overlooked. The match was quite enjoyable, but it was over quite abruptly, with Kanemoto being able to put Hamada away quite easily, despite Hamada and Samurai having shown more impressive teamwork. The work of both Kanemoto and Otani didn't reach the energy levels shown in the 4/13/95 match. ***  

NJPW 6/12/95 Osaka Furitsu Taiikukaikan, UWA World Welterweight Title: Koji Kanemoto vs. Gran Hamada 13:07. This was for the UWA World Welterweight Title, which was apparently billed as the UWA World Junior Heavyweight Title in NJPW. The work was generally good throughout this match, but they never seemed to be able to take it to the next level. The start of the match was quite cool though, because Kanemoto and Hamada each hit a dropkick respectively, and then Hamada followed it up with a tope suicida. While Hamada was an excellent worker, a singles match in New Japan against a worker who still hadn't fully figured things out for himself yet wasn't a setting Hamada was going to excel in. With that being said, Hamada still did a very good job guiding Kanemoto, who showed enthusiasm and some very good moves. Just when it seemed the match was going to have a hot finishing stretch, it was over when Kanemoto made Hamada submit out of nowhere. ***¼

NJPW 6/14/95 Tokyo Nippon Budokan: Gran Hamada & Shinjiro Otani vs. Black Tiger II & Dean Malenko 14:27. Black Tiger II showed a good amount of intensity, which, along with his crisp work, made him one of the most outstanding workers in this match. His work against Shinjiro Otani was a good way to start this interesting match-up. Gran Hamada and Dean Malenko did some quick reversals on the mat when they wrestled each other. Hamada's response to a dropkick by Malenko was a flying headscissors, which Malenko sold well. The work in this match was at its smoothest when Hamada and Eddy Guerrero wrestled each other. Guerrero and Malenko showed good teamwork. Hamada and Otani wanted to prove they were able to win this tag team match though, and they had each other's back. The final five minutes were quite strong, even though it kinda was like a finishing stretch that never quite turned into a finish stretch. Still, the action in those final five minutes was very good though. Otani hit a springboard dropkick on both opponents. Hamada and Otani then hit a pescado on Malenko and Guerrero respectively. Malenko came close to victory when he had Otani in the Texas cloverleaf hold, but Otani reached the ropes, much to the frustration of Malenko. The fans marked out when Otani reached the ropes. Soon after that, Otani managed to score the pinfall over Malenko for the win. This was a good and fun match. ***¼  

NJPW 6/25/95 Saitama Omiya Skate Center: Gran Hamada & Norio Honaga vs. Dean Malenko & Tokimitsu Ishizawa 11:33. Tokimitsu Ishizawa (the future Kendo Kashin) was still an undercard worker at the time, this would normally give Dean Malenko's team a disadvantage. However, on 10/12/94, Malenko & Ishizawa had defeated Gran Hamada & Norio Honaga in the junior tag tournament. Hamada hit a really nice flying headscissors and huracarrana on Malenko, which Malenko was able to sell well. Despite being shorter in stature than most of his opponents throughout his career, Hamada's athleticism, combined with his grittiness, always made him come across as a tough opponent. Honaga was solid, but didn't stand out too much. The action in this match was good, but it didn't really have an exciting finishing stretch, which kinda made this come across as just another opening match, especially with the lower ranked Ishizawa doing the somewhat expected job. ***

AAA 1/26/96 Nezahualcoyotl: Gran Hamada & Rey Misterio Jr. & Latin Lover vs. Psicosis & Pentagon & Vegas 7:11, 4:47, 5:00. This Pentagon was the wrestler who was known as Espanto Jr. from the mid 1980s through the mid 1990s (not to be confused with other workers called Pentagon and other workers called Espanto). Vegas was previously known as Black Power. Gran Hamada was able to change settings so easily. No matter whether it's the "strong style" league NJPW, the lucharesu league MPW or a progressive lucha league like the Mexican league AAA, Hamada knows how to approach the match and make his work be valuable. Hamada vs. Psicosis was an interesting match-up to open the match. 1996 was arguably Rey Misterio Jr.'s most impressive year, as he was able to get pretty much everyone to talk about his incredible high flying skills. When Misterio made his way to the ring for this match, he wore a Love Machine mask over his regular mask just for his entrance, presumably as a tribute to Art Barr. Psicosis, one of Misterio's main foes, was the best worker on the rudo team. Latin Lover was a mediocre luchador without a mask, and he had a male stripper gimmick. Psicosis did his best to make Lover's work look impressive by bumping like a maniac, as Psicosis took a tremendous bump through the ropes shoulder-first into the ringpost with a crash landing onto the floor. Pentagon wasn't too impressive in this match, and he would actually retire in March 1996 after almost dying in the ring landing wrong. This was a pretty good match overall, but it really was only Misterio, Psicosis and Hamada who were impressive in this match. The other three weren't bad, but they certainly dragged things down a bit, as the action slowed down quite a bit, especially during the second fall and the beginning of the third fall. This was because the rudos mostly did some generic lucha brawling during those periods they were dominating. The action picked up once Psicosis and Misterio worked against each other again. The finish was particularly spectacular, because it involved Misterio and Psicosis doing what they did best, which was being awesome luchadores. *** 

NJPW 2/25/96 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan: Gran Hamada & El Samurai & Black Tiger II vs. Koji Kanemoto & Shinjiro Otani & Dean Malenko 16:26. Almost exactly a month prior to this match, El Samurai and Shinjiro Otani had worked a great progessive singles match against each other, but here they were in a six-man tag that looked very interesting on paper and turned out to be excellent in actuality. Black Tiger II (Eddy Guerrero) and Dean Malenko were very familiar with each other, as they've wrestled each other in several different leagues. Their work against each other was very smooth, and was able to impress the tough sumo hall crowd. The underrated El Samurai once again was super reliable and played a big role in this match being cohesive, as he was able to work well with everyone in this match, which included both partners and all three opponents. Everyone was able to try to make every move count, as there was very little time being wasted, yet the match was wrestled at a somewhat deliberate pace. It was the intensity and eye for detail that made this match so good. All six workers were attentive and made sure whatever they contributed was for a greater good. While it shouldn't be surprising that this match was excellent, as all six names are big names in 1990s junior heavyweight wrestling, but the NJPW junior heavyweight division has always been hit-and-miss, despite its glorious reputation. However, this match certainly was able to live up to its potential. It was really cool that Samurai and Otani were the ones who started this match and the ones who ended this match. ****  

NJPW 3/14/96 Kyoto Prefectural Gym: Gran Hamada & Jushin Thunder Liger & El Samurai & Wild Pegasus vs. TAKA Michinoku & Koji Kanemoto & Shinjiro Otani & Tokimitsu Ishizawa 25:57. The match started off with all four of his opponents stomping onto Wild Pegasus. Perhaps they were angry at him for joining WCW. One of the most incredible things about Jushin Thunder Liger is that he's still able to be a respectable and rightful leader while giving others a chance to shine and grow, yet still making sure his own in-ring work is as good as it can be at this more mature stage of his career. El Samurai put over the offense of his opponents really well. Gran Hamada wasn't in this match that often, unfortunately, but he was excellent whenever he was in, always making sure to add more to the general flow of the match in a positive way. TAKA Michinoku was one of the most impressive workers in the world at the time, but the same could be said for pretty much everyone in this match, except for Tokimitsu Ishizawa. TAKA hit a couple of amazing springboard moves. Shinjiro Otani got the chance to have some awesome work with Samurai and Liger in particular, two of his best opponents. Koji Kanemoto worked particularly well against Samurai. There was a really cool spot where Samurai got attacked by a dropkick from Kanemoto and a top-rope dropkick from Otani at the same time. Soon after this, everyone started hitting spectacular planchas until Ishizawa embarrassed himself and slipped on the apron. Even the commentators started chuckling. Luckily, Ishizawa wasn't in this match that often, which meant this was still an excellent match. Just the first fall alone was excellent enough to make this a four-star match. If you didn't know this was a 2-out-of-3 falls match, you'd be pleasantly surprised to find out the match continued. Pegasus was the worker of the second fall, because of his intensity and execution. Pegasus' work against Otani was particularly crisp in this fall, which was fitting, because the two would be involved in a match that would decide the first WCW Cruiserweight Champion at a NJPW show on 3/20/96. This was an excellent eight-man tag team match, despite it being a 2-0 win for Liger's team. Perhaps it would have been even better if it was a 2-1 win, but it's hard to complain about a match this excellent. After the match, Liger, Pegasus, Samurai and Hamada each held up four fingers, signalling they were the junior heavyweight version of the Four Horsemen (and, of course, some of you might recall that Pegasus was also one of the members of the WCW version of the Horsemen). ****¼  

NJPW 4/5/96 Tokyo Korakuen Hall Jushin Thunder Liger & Gran Hamada & El Samurai vs. TAKA Michinoku & Koji Kanemoto & Shinjiro Otani 19:11. This trios match featured six of the best junior heavyweights in the world at the time. The match started off with El Samurai and Shinjiro Otani continuing their tremendous feud. They showed no mercy for each other and were both quite relentless in their approach against each other. Once Koji Kanemoto was tagged in, Kanemoto tried to pick up where Otani left off. Not for long though, as quick tags in and out seemed to be part of the heel team's strategy early in the match. It's always interesting to see 1990s matches of TAKA Michinoku in NJPW, because it was an opportunity to see him work against workers other than his usual MPW opponents during a time period in which he was one of the best workers in the world. Shoichi Funaki was in TAKA's corner to support him, but that didn't save TAKA from being on the receiving-end of a ferocious powerbomb executed by Jushin Thunder Liger. The execution overall was great in this match, as everything was executed with authority, especially whenever Liger's team was on offense. Kanemoto's team had the flashier offense though. The pace was steady, which helped keep things interesting at all times. Once Kanemoto's team had the chance to keep Liger in their corner, they took advantage of it and worked over Liger's leg. Kanemoto's team showed great teamwork and the fans appreciated the excellent wrestling they displayed, despite them facing Liger's superhero team. Liger kept selling the attack on his leg very well, even after tagging out. Gran Hamada added a lot of excellence to this match with his quick bursts of intensity and athletic moves. Hamada also tried to throw in some submission holds, as he attacked Otani's injured arm and attempted to make Otani submit to an armbar. When that didn't do the trick, Hamada decided it was time to show off his high flying skills. Liger's team managed to have the upper hand for quite a while, and they showed a lot of aggression, as they were determined to teach their foes a lesson. Kanemoto's team was too spunky to stay down though. The finishing stretch was climatically great, and it was a satisfying way to finish this great junior heavyweight six-man tag team match. ****½   

MPW 7/26/96 Aizuwakamatsu Tsurugajo City Gymnasium, WWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Title: Gran Hamada vs. MEN'S Teio 13:46. MEN's Teio was previously known as Terry Boy, and was a Gran Hamada trainee who started his career in Universal. Hamada started the match off by working over Teio's left arm, but the match went to the floor as soon as Teio managed to escape Hamada's mat offense. Teio attacked Hamada on the floor with a chair, but the match ended up back in the ring. Teio had the advantage, as Hamada was still selling Teio's vicious attack on the floor. Teio certainly isn't the most spectacular wrestler in this league filled with high flyers, but he was definitely a good worker who focused on crisp execution. He was very deliberate in his approach and combined brawling with more standard puroresu, as he wasn't the quickest and barely did any flying. Teio's old ring name, Terry Boy, is an homage to Terry Funk, but luckily Teio didn't copy Funk's overselling, because that would have been really out of place. Near the finish, Hamada leaped off the second rope and executed a tremendous swinging DDT, a move he seemingly only started using earlier in this year. It's nice that Hamada tried to update his move set at this stage of his career, and he clearly tried to stay relevant as an in-ring performer, not simply relying on his name and veteran status. Hamada won this match via submission as he applied an armbar on Teio's left arm, which was the same arm Hamada worked over for a bit in the beginning of this match. This was a good puroresu match, because the selling was strong and the execution was done well. ***¼ 

MPW 8/18/96 Aomori-ken Min Taiikukan: Gran Hamada & Jushin Thunder Liger & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shoichi Funaki 13:23. It was interesting seeing NJPW star Jushin Thunder Liger take part in a MPW trios match and join the MPW babyface team. The MPW workers were very familiar with each other and worked at a high pace. The great Liger fit in perfectly and helped make this excellent by adding quality to the match without being the center of attention. His presence and effort was certainly appreciated by the crowd. These six workers all made the most of the 13 minutes, as this was action-packed from start to finish without things feeling rushed. They kept things going, but they made sure to execute things properly and give everything they did proper attention. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shoichi Funaki represented the villainous Kaientai DX stable, which also included Shiryu and MEN's Teio. They did a lot of double-teaming and triple-teaming, and they tried to keep the opponent they were working over in their corner. The babyfaces came to each other's aid though, which made it hard for Kaientai to stay in control for too long. There were several spectacular dives near the end of the match, with all six workers flying around in picturesque fashion. You wouldn't think Hamada was much older than these guys, as he was able to contribute at high speed, and he was able to hit spectacular moves, like a top-rope huracarrana and a plancha off the top to the floor. There were several near-falls near the end, which added to all the excitement. This was an excellent lucharesu match, showing the greatness of the MPW workers at the time. It probably would have been a great match if it was a few minutes longer. The mid 1990s truly was the peak of MPW. ****¼

MPW 9/23/96 Towada City Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & Super Delfin & Super Astro & Alexander Otsuka vs. Dick Togo & Shiryu & Shoichi Funaki & Danny Collins 17:10 of 19:55. English wrestler Danny Collins joined forces with Kaientai DX for this event. Michinoku Pro babyface regulars Gran Hamada and Super Delfin were joined by Mexican luchador Super Astro and Battlarts wrestler Alexander Otsuka. Super Delfin was previously known as Monkey Magic Wakita, but in the spring of 1992, after returning from a tour of Mexico, where he competed as Momotaro, he had started becoming known as Super Delfin. Whenever Otsuka was in this match, he tried to take the action to the mat, but his technical wrestling skills were not of much help when KDX worked together and kept Otsuka in their corner. Collins was a decent British style worker, and he didn't drag things down, but he certainly didn't stand out too much here, as he was surrounded by some of the most spectacular wrestlers around. Collins also lacked the speed to really keep up with the workers in this match. Super Astro stood only 5'3" tall, but he wowed the crowd with his high flying skills. Hamada and Togo showed a lot of intensity and high quality work when they battled. Funaki got tortured by Otsuka, Hamada and Delfin, who all grabbed a hold on Funaki. As revenge, the heels triple-teamed Otsuka in their corner. Togo and Astro probably stood out most in this match, but everyone contributed in some form. Shiryu and Hamada also deserved to be mentioned as standouts, because Shiryu's work was crisp whenever he was in, and Hamada showed lots of intensity when he was in action. In the end, this was an excellent match, but 1996 featured many multi-person tag team matches featuring MPW stars that were excellent, so it's not a MOTY candidate in a year that was loaded with top-notch matches, but this certainly still is a match that is well worth watching. ****

MPW 10/10/96 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan: Gran Hamada & Super Delfin & Masato Yakushiji & Tiger Mask IV & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shiryu & Shoichi Funaki 32:07. Of all the battles between Michinoku Pro Sekigun and Kaientai Deluxe, this is probably their most famous. Individually, not each and everyone one of these workers were necessarily always excellent, but this group worked together so well that they were able to have a great lucharesu match. Dick Togo and Masato Yakushiji started this match off at a high pace. TAKA Michinoku and Tiger Mask IV got to continue their feud, as they had several singles matches against each other before. MEN's Teio and Gran Naniwa, arguably the two least spectacular workers in this match, battled each other next. Gran Hamada took Shoichi Funaki to the mat and tried to go for a quick submission, but TAKA rescued his Dream Chaser tag team partner. Super Delfin and Shiryu worked against each other smoothly, and Delfin ended up on the front row seats. Everyone had now been in the ring at least once during this match. The match continued with frequent tags being made, keeping the action fresh and exciting. Togo, Teio, Shiryu and TAKA were super solid bases for the speedy Yakushiji, who executed super smooth flying headscissors and arm drags. Hamada and Togo showed their grittiness when they battled. The charismatic Delfin was popular with the crowd, but he also delivered in the ring. Hamada was explosive when he was in the ring, as he executed his moves with authority. At some point, Naniwa got stuck in Kaientai's corner and got quintuple-teamed. After Naniwa, other members of the Sekigun team also became victims of being assaulted in Kaietai's corner. Tiger Mask IV almost got unmasked. Kaientai was very deliberate and kind of cocky in their approach at this stage in the match. Yakushiji and Delfin were able to stop KDX's assault temporarily. Hamada came close to pinning TAKA. Togo, Shiryu and Teio hit a triple tope suicida attack. The action was non-stop from this point onward. Funaki hit a springboard plancha, and TAKA hit an awesome springboard twisting moonsault to the floor and landed in the crowd. More dives followed, as Yakushiji and Tiger hit a double tope suicida attack. Delfin and Naniwa hit planchas off the top rope to the floor. It's hard to say who the best worker in this match was, as everyone worked super hard, but Togo, TAKA and Hamada probably stood out most. Not too far removed from the finish, Hamada hit a tremendous swinging DDT on Togo. Later in the match, Hamada hit a swinging DDT off the apron onto Teio on the floor. Despite Sekigun's brief momentum near the end, Togo managed to pin Delfin after a flying senton to give KDX the win. Sekigun's leader, The Great Sasuke, showed up and showed his disapproval of KDX beating his team. This was truly a great match. The work was top-notch, the execution was crisp and the 10-minute finishing stretch was amazing. *****

MPW 10/19/96 Ichinoseki Cultural Center Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Masato Yakushiji vs. Dick Togo & Shiryu & MEN's Teio 18:01. The match started off with some matwork involving Shiryu and Sasuke, but the action quickly spilled to the floor. There was a lot of space on the floor to walk on, and Togo rammed Sasuke through a door that led to the back of the venue. Despite being more than 16 years older than everyone else in this match, Hamada showed that he still was a relevant performer by fitting in perfectly, and adding quality content through his skill and intensity. It's nice to see that Hamada got to still play a big role during this peak of lucharesu, as Hamada was the one who really was the father of lucharesu. The action was excellent in this match. The pace wasn't always turned up to the highest setting, but the work was crisp, and everyone worked together smoothly. Yakushiji and Sasuke hit tremendous dives, signalling the start of the finishing stretch. Hamada gave an excellent performance, and this is definitely a match Hamada fans should check out. Togo was probably the worker of the match, but all six workers contributed to this match significantly. This was an excellent lucharesu match that wasn't necessarily one of the best 1996 MPW matches out there, but during this year, this league was having excellent matches on quite a regular basis. ****

MPW 11/7/96 Tohoku B&G Marine Center, Tag League: Gran Hamada & Naohiro Hoshikawa vs. TAKA Michinoku & Shoichi Funaki 14:38. TAKA Michinoku and Shoichi Funaki, the Dream Chasers, showed they really wanted to win this match and get more points in this tag tournament when they attacked their opposition even before the match started. Despite being a formidable tag team, TAKA & Funaki played dirty. This wasn't a big surprise, since they were members of the top heel stable Kaientai Deluxe. Naohiro Hoshikawa was a worker who was still coming into his own at the time, but certainly showed potential to play a bigger role in the future. Hoshikawa took a nice bump between the ropes into the ringpost. The KDX team dominated most of the match, which resulted in Hamada & Hoshikawa taking a lot of punishment. Things got quite out of hand at some point, with TAKA hitting Hoshikawa with a chair in the ring, and KDX leader Dick Togo hitting Hamada with a chair on the floor. TAKA showed no respect for anyone and even attacked The Great Sasuke on the floor. It wasn't all brawling, as TAKA and Funaki showed their wrestling skills occasionally. This was a pretty good match, but the finish was crappy, as the referee disqualified the Sekigun team when The Great Sasuke tried to come to the rescue, despite the KDX team cheating for half the match. Kaientai's Dick Togo & MEN's Teio would eventually win this tournament. *** 

MPW 11/12/96 Maebashi Gunma Sports Center: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Super Delfin vs. Dick Togo & Shiryu & MEN's Teio 16:12. The action was super intense and of high quality. The work was crisp, as they executed everything super smoothly. The crowd was super into this, as they understood they were witnessing a great pro wrestling match featuring some of the hippest cats in the land. MPW was so much fun to watch back in the day, and they truly revolutionized junior heavyweight wrestling. Shiryu's role in the golden years of MPW often gets overlooked, which is kinda fitting since he (Kaz Hayashi) is one of the most underrated wrestlers anyway. The final minutes were insanely great. The Great Sasuke hit a tremendous Asai moonsault. Hamada hit a tremendous top-rope huracarrana on Teio. Hamada then hit a huracarrana on Togo that almost got him the win. Sasuke and Delfin hit a double missile dropkick attack on Shiryu. Hamada hit a swinging DDT off the apron onto Togo on the floor. Sasuke hit a quebrada on Shiryu, and Sasuke followed it up with a Thunder Fire Powerbomb for the win. This match pretty much featured non-stop high quality action. It was fitting Gran Hamada was one of the participants, since he was the father of lucharesu. While Hamada made significant contributions to the 8-man tags and 10-man tags he was a part of that year, this was a trios match, which meant there was more time and opportunity for him to stand out. This match is certainly recommended for Hamada fans, and also recommended for anyone who is interested in watching a great pro wrestling match. ****¾ 

Inoki Festival 12/1/96 Yoyogi National Gymnasium #2: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Super Delfin & Naohiro Hoshikawa & Masato Yakushiji vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shiryu & MEN's Teio & Shoichi Funaki 16:40. This show featured some unusual match-ups, but this particular match was a great one, which was to be expected. The match started off with two of the best pure workers in the world at the time, The Great Sasuke and TAKA Michinoku, battling it out. KDX started their collective assault, but Sasuke was able to escape and tag out. Shiryu gave a strong performance and worked at a fast pace, in particular when he was working sequences with Super Delfin. Hamada and Togo had their usual tough guy battle. Togo was a super base for Yakushiji, who looked like a million bucks when he battled Togo. Hamada showed a lot of intensity whenever he was in. Shiryu was one of the most outstanding workers in this match, along with Togo, Sasuke and TAKA. Yakushiji hit a crazy tope suicida that sent him flying over the commentators table. Sasuke hit a tremendous quebrada that almost got him a pin over both TAKA and Shiryu. A bit later, Sasuke hit an Asai moonsault on Teio. In the end, it was Togo with the pin over Yakushiji that got KDX the win. Unfortunately, this was much shorter than the great 10/10/96 match from the MPW These Days show. However, the work was smooth and the fast pace helped make this a really exciting match. They absolutely made the most out of the 16 minutes, and were able to make this a truly great match. These guys showed here exactly why Michinoku Pro was the league that was arguably the most fun to watch at the time. ****¾

MPW 12/16/96 Fukuoka Hakata Star Lanes: The Great Sasuke & Hamada & Delfin & Naniwa & Yakushiji vs. Togo & Men's & TAKA & Shiryu & Funaki 23:16. Sekigun vs. Kaientai Deluxe. Hakata Star Lanes was the venue of the great 3/17/95 battle between Mayumi Ozaki and Dynamite Kansai. On this particular day, 12/16/96, this venue got to witness another great match, Michinoku Pro Sekigun vs. Kaientai Deluxe. Gran Hamada and TAKA Michinoku started the match off and set the tone of the match with their intensity. There were lots of quick tags early on and throughout the match. Hamada and Togo tried to settle their never-ending battle of trying to figure out which of the two was the tougher man, as they hit each other ferociously. After 23 minutes of non-stop action, the match came to an end. Hamada got the pinfall over Shiryu. It was fitting these two were involved in the finish, since they were two of the most outstanding workers in this match, along with The Great Sasuke and Dick Togo, who both also stood out as two of the most impressive ones in this match. The crowd chanted "Ha-ma-da!" in appreciation and respect for the father of lucharesu after he scored the win for his team. This match is highly recommended for anyone interested in the career of Hamada and for anyone interested in watching a great pro wrestling match. The workrate in this match was super high and the timing was great. The execution was superb. The speed and athleticism displayed here was phenomenal. The crowd went nuts for all the action, and they clearly loved every minute of this. Everyone worked hard and tried to contribute significantly to the best of their respective abilities without being selfish. This is great pro wrestling! *****

MPW 12/20/96 Nagoya Nakamura Sports Center: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Masato Yakushiji & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & Shiryu & MEN'S Teio & Shoichi Funaki 22:32. Nobody took Masato Yakushiji's arm drags better than Dick Togo did. Also, nobody took Gran Hamada's top-rope huracarrana better than Togo did. The story of this match was about Funaki selling his leg, which appeared to be legitimately injured. The action was generally very good, but this wasn't among the best 1996 MPW matches by any means, because Funaki having to be taken to the back took a lot of momentum out of this match. They did the best they could to still have a good match, despite this basically being 4-on-3 for the most part. ***¼ 

MPW 1/14/97 Sapporo Nakajima Taiiku Center: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Super Delfin vs. Dick Togo & MEN'S Teio & Shiryu 21:43. Kaientai Deluxe was dominating early on, both in the ring and during the brawling on the floor. Kaientai DX acted like the true villains that they were. Eventually, Sasuke's team was able to fight back, and the pendulum swung the other way. Both teams showed a lot of intensity, and the will to destroy the other team. Sasuke's team generally fought more fairly, but sometimes they felt that fighting fire with fire was necessary and justified. Gran Hamada executed his moves with a lot of impact. Togo and Great Sasuke were probably the workers of the match. Sasuke's flying was amazing. Togo's work was inspired, as usual, as his work certainly played a big role in this being an excellent match. Shiryu and Hamada were very useful, as always. MEN'S Teio gave a strong performance, one of his strongest, as he was a driving force and almost as effective as Dick Togo and Shiryu. Delfin probably was the least impressive worker in this particular match, but he certainly contributed as well. This was an excellent match, and it had a bit of a different lay-out compared to their previous matches, showing that they can have excellent matches and mixing things up to keep things fresh and interesting. ****¼ 

Battlarts 1/21/97 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Masato Yakushiji & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shiryu & MEN'S Teio 20:40. The Michinoku Pro guys were guests on this Battlarts show at Korakuen Hall, and they stole the show here, showing the Korakuen Hall what MPW is all about. This was a true war, and certainly not a friendly match. Shiryu ripped off Gran Naniwa's mask, exposing Naniwa's face, and Teio followed it up by smashing Naniwa's head with a chair. Naniwa juiced, and looked like a bloody mess. Once again, the Michinoku Pro guys were able to have an excellent match, yet work this completely differently than their previous matches. Gran Hamada showed a lot of intensity when he was in, and he worked particularly excellent sequences with Dick Togo. Shiryu was super reliable and his work here was certainly very useful. It's a shame that Shiryu wasn't happy in MPW, and he would soon leave MPW to start wrestling in Mexico and WCW. This was probably one of the earliest signs of MPW about to lose a lot of momentum later that year. Either way, in this match, things were still seemingly great for MPW. TAKA Michinoku was still one of the most exciting workers in the world at this time, and his work here was lots of fun to watch. Masato Yakushiji's speed and flying ability made him a joy to watch. Naniwa's performance here was a lot more memorable than almost any other performance he has ever given (although not quite on the level of the 1995 masked man tournament). Sasuke hit an insane dive near the end. ****½ 

ECW 2/14/97 Webster, MA Town Hall: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Terry Boy. This was the first time ECW talent participated on an ECW show. This was pretty much a warm up for their upcoming match at the big Barely Legal PPV on 4/13/97 in Philly, which was ECW's first PPV. The wrestling was really good, but it was not on the level these six were capable of delivering. Great Sasuke stood out most, especially during the final minutes. Gran Hamada and Dick Togo also gave a strong showing, and TAKA Michinoku worked hard from start to finish. Terry Boy and Gran Naniwa went all out only during the final minute of the match. In the end, it was Togo with the pin over Naniwa. It was a very good match, but definitely not essential viewing when you consider these guys have had way better matches. Still, this is certainly worth watching for all you completists out there. ***¼ 

MPW 3/1/97 Takaishi Osaka Rinkai Sports Center: Gran Hamada vs. Shoichi Funaki 8:07. This match was part of a 5-on-5 series of singles matches featuring Sekigun and Kaientai Deluxe members. Shoichi Funaki tried to use his mat wrestling skills to get past Hamada, but Hamada's grittiness kept him alive. Hamada was still super over with the crowd at this stage of his career, as the crowd cheered and applauded wildly when he hit a tremendously intense headbutt on Funaki. However, Funaki stayed focused on his goal and kept taking it to Hamada. Funaki decided it was time to focus on Hamada's leg for a bit, perhaps in an effort to stop Hamada from relying on high flying. Funaki took Hamada seriously as a threat in this series of matches, which was evident when he resorted to piledriving Hamada on the floor. Hamada was super tough, and was still alive. Funaki was still in control though. Funaki may not have been the most spectacular wrestler, but he was definitely useful. In the end, as hard as Funaki tried, Hamada was too much to handle, and the legendary Hamada managed to score the win. It was a very good match while it lasted, but it was only eight minutes long, which was understandable since it was part of a series of singles matches, not necessarily meant to stand out as a standalone match. Still, this was good. ***¼ 

MPW 3/16/97 Yahaba Townsman Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Super Delfin & Masato Yakushiji & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shoichi Funaki & MEN'S Teio & Masayoshi Motegi 22:27. The Kaientai DX members were wearing bWo shirts, which shows the negative influence from American wrestling was slowly becoming a thing.  KDX acted like a bunch of bullies, and they were in control for quite a lengthy amount of time. There wasn't that much urgency for most of this match, at least compared to the previous big 8-man and 10-man tag matches involving most of these MPW workers. Gran Hamada did well for himself during this match, and while his work was very good in this very good match, this probably isn't necessarily one of the matches where he was among the most outstanding workers in the match. About 18 minutes or so into the match, things started picking up with The Great Sasuke leading his team on offense with some fast-paced spectacular action. Sasuke and TAKA Michinoku worked excellent sequences together, and those were the two workers that stood out most in this match during those final minutes of hot action. Unfortunately, TAKA would start working first in Mexico and then for WWF, probably because of being unhappy with his pay in MPW. Masato Yakushiji showed his tremendous athleticism when he leaped from the top rope and hit a tremendous flying headscissors on Dick Togo. Soon after that, we got the very disappointing finishing result of Motegi pinning Yakushiji, despite Masayoshi Motegi not really contributing anything at all. This was a very good match, but it didn't have the same energy most of their previous matches had. Motegi being in this match for no real good reason also didn't help, of course. ***¾ 

ECW Barely Legal 4/13/97 Philadelphia, PA ECW Arena: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Masato Yakushiji vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Terry Boy 16:55. Masato Yakushiji was a replacement for the injured Gran Naniwa. MEN'S Teio was billed as Terry Boy, probably because of his old name being a tribute to Terry Funk, who was in the main event of this ECW PPV event, which was ECW's first ever PPV (and probably also because MEN'S Teio is maybe too much of an obscure sounding name for the American audience). Commentator Joey Styles did a good job of putting over the talent in this match, and the self-entitled ECW Arena crowd did a great job of reacting to the high quality in-ring work. One of the most interesting things about the ECW Arena crowd was that they would be very loyal to whatever ECW wanted them to believe was really good wrestling (and in this case, it actually was really good wrestling). In the case of this match, it was certainly a good thing, as the crowd was really into the excellent action here and helped create a suitable atmosphere. The American wrestling scene in the 2020s seems to be catching on now when it comes to appreciation of exciting wrestling moves and international talent, but the ECW Arena crowd was definitely ahead of the curve. That doesn't take away from the fact that ECW was mostly a garbage wrestling league with not too many good matches. However, this match featuring MPW talent was definitely a very good match. Great Sasuke had unsuccessfully challenged Jushin Thunder Liger for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title the night before at the Tokyo Dome in NJPW, but despite this, Sasuke still was able to give a strong performance and was among the very best performers on this show. Gran Hamada showed his toughness, yet he also showed he was still athletic at this stage of his career, making Hamada one of the standout performers of this event. Yakushiji gave a better performance than Naniwa probably would have given. Togo & TAKA & Terry showed their strong and advanced teamwork. TAKA hit a sick brainbuster on Yakushiji. During the last few minutes, these eight went all out and delivered their most spectacular moves. Hamada and Togo particularly worked well during the finish stages of the match. In the end, it was Sasuke pinning TAKA for the win. Hamada would be back in the ECW Arena for a match against Gran Naniwa on 1/10/98. That match was already ruined before it started though, as it turned out they picked an AC/DC song as Hamada's ECW theme song. During that 1/10/98 match, after Naniwa acted a bit heelish, Styles would hilariously claim that "this is a much different Naniwa than we saw at Barely Legal," even though Naniwa wasn't even in the match at Barely Legal due to the injury, which Styles apparently had forgotten about. Another thing that got botched in that match was the finish, as referee John "Pee Wee" Moore counted to three, since he thought Hamada's swinging DDT was supposed to be the finish. Hamada wouldn't have it and executed the actual finishing move, the top-rope huracarrana and demanded the referee to count to three for the actual finish. You can't blame Hamada for wanting the ref to get the finish right, especially considering Hamada would have to job in less than five minutes to Justin Credible (a.k.a. PJ Walker/Aldo Montoya) later that month in Hamada's final ECW match. Anyway, that was just a little info about Hamada vs. Naniwa from 1/10/98, which was an okay match. The trios match from the 4/13/97 Barely Legal PPV was a very good match, and I can see why some people might even think this was excellent or great, as it was better than most matches in the United States at the time. However, if you compare this to most top-notch Michinoku Pro matches of the mid 1990s, it becomes clear this was "only" very good. One of the things that kept this from being excellent was the focus on the hot finishing minutes to pleasing the foreign crowd, without really focusing on the buildup. This likely would have been a different story if this were to take place at Michinoku Pro show in Japan. ***½    

NJPW 5/3/97 Tokyo Dome: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & El Samurai & Super Delfin & Norio Honaga vs. Dick Togo & Koji Kanemoto & Shinjiro Otani & MEN'S Teio & Hanzo Nakajima. It was kinda odd seeing Norio Honaga on the babyface team. Couldn't they have had Honaga on the heel team instead of Hanzo Nakajima and have Naohiro Hoshikawa on the babyface team instead of Honaga? This was Gran Hamada's only 1997 NJPW match, and he showed a lot of intensity when he was in. Kanemoto was one of the hardest workers on his team. This was a 2-out-of-3 falls match, but I don't think they utilized the second fall very well, because they treated it more like a restart of sorts instead of following up on what happened in the first fall. The Great Sasuke was the worker of the match, because he was able to make the viewer forget about the more dragging portions of the match. This was a very good match, because most of these workers were very good or excellent pro wrestlers who were able to add something to this match, even with this not being on the level of the 8-man and 10-man tags at Michinoku Pro shows. For a match that was going to end in a 2-0 victory for the heels, this was a bit too one-sided for no good reason, since the babyface side featured capable wrestlers. This was a very good match overall, but it wasn't on the level of the best matches most of these guys were giving us in 1996/1997, so it was disappointing considering who was involved. After this show, we wouldn't see Michinoku Pro wrestlers appear at a NJPW show for about 15 months, because of Great Sasuke's appearances at ECW and WWF shows (which was a problem because of NJPW's business ties with WCW, the rival league of WWF and ECW). ***½

MPW 5/5/97 Nakayama Townsman Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & Shoichi Funaki & Hanzo Nakajima 17:44. They started off with a lot of enthusiasm. The Great Sasuke rammed Hanzo Nakjima into a tree outside of the building. Gran Naniwa and Hanzo Nakajima were okay workers, but nowhere near the level of the three best workers in this match, and those workers were Sasuke, Dick Togo and Gran Hamada. Naniwa was entertaining, and Hanzo was able to do some cool-looking athletic spots here and there. Shoichi Funaki was a pretty good worker who wasn't the best, but definitely not the worst either. One of the coolest things about the MPW multi-man tag matches was that it was never the same match, but also never wasn't the same line-up, as the participants were always slightly different. Sometimes one guy would not be in the main multi-man tag match on the show and wrestle in a singles match instead, and they'd be rotated. Hamada hit some spectacular high flying moves in this match, and he was actually the most impressive worker in this match, and he even got the pinfall win. ***¾ 

MPW 6/22/97 Namie Sunshine: Gran Hamada & Jinsei Shinzaki vs. The Great Sasuke & Tiger Mask IV 8:40 of 21:53. Jinsei Shinzaki was an okay-ish worker overall. He stood out in WWF when he was Hakushi, but that was because the average level of quality wasn't very high in WWF, but here in 1990s MPW, he was always one of the less impressive workers because of him being slower and lazier than most of the MPW workers at the time. However, Shinzaki was very familiar with Sasuke's work, since the two had an extensive feud in 1993-1994, and this made their interactions quite good. Tiger Mask IV was quite capable of contributing to matches like these, when there was at least one or two workers in there who would be able to bring the best out of him, and in MPW, he was usually surrounded by workers who would be able to help him get to that next level. With that being said, this was a good match. The Great Sasuke was the most outstanding performer, as expected. Gran Hamada worked hard and did really well, especially considering his age. Tiger IV hit a nice tope suicida. This appeared to be a good match overall, but less than half of the match was shown. After this tour, Sasuke would wrestle a couple of matches against TAKA Michinoku at WWF shows in Alberta, but Sasuke ended up not working WWF shows anymore after those two matches (because of disagreements between Sasuke and WWF), and it was actually TAKA who ended up working for WWF regularly, even though TAKA was originally only brought in to put Sasuke over. Around this time, it became more and more clear that MPW was indeed falling apart. ***  

MPW 9/14/97 Sakata Municipal Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Masato Yakushiji vs. Dick Togo & Shoichi Funaki & MEN'S Teio 11:53 of 18:20. Gran Hamada went for a wakigatame early on Shoichi Funaki, but since Funaki was quite familiar with Hamada by now, especially after also wrestling him in a couple of singles matches in addition to all the tag matches, he was prepared for it. Hamada did well, but we didn't get to see him as much as preferred in the minutes that were shown. MEN'S Teio showed his drive to succeed and his determination to help his team get the win here. With Shiryu gone, TAKA Michinoku no longer appearing regularly and The Great Sasuke seemingly starting to go slightly mad, MPW wasn't the league it once was. However, these six workers all gave a strong performance and delivered a very good match that was fun to watch. Sasuke hit a beautiful Asai moonsault on Teio. Dick Togo, Kaientai's leader, hit a big senton splash off the top rope onto Yakushiji for the win. This was very good, but not quite on the level of MPW's best trios matches. Considering the circumstances of MPW going through tough times, they certainly did a really good job of still giving the few people in attendance their money's worth. ***½ 

MPW 9/23/97 Aizuwakamatsu Aizu Dome: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Naohiro Hoshikawa vs. Dick Togo & MEN'S Teio & Shoichi Funaki 14:16 of 19:39. The Great Sasuke and Gran Hamada showed good teamwork. It's good to see that at least someone still was getting along with Sasuke in those days. Noahiro Hoshikawa looked quite a bit different after getting a haircut, and it took a few seconds to actually realize it was him in this match. Kaientai showed good teamwork, and they tried to keep Hamada in their corner as long as possible. Funaki was about to continue his in-ring feud with Hamada, but Sasuke interrupted and put Funaki in a sleeper hold. Later in the match, Sasuke hit a beautiful tope con giro. It took him a while to get into the match, but eventually his contributions were quite good. The final minutes had the vibe of the classic MPW matches. The match was ruined by the bad finish though. TAKA interfered in a match that was about to have a satisfying conclusion. TAKA, wearing an Austin 3:16 shirt, interfered, hit the Michinoku Driver on Sasuke and gave people the double bird. This was a pretty good match, but it wasn't on the level of the classic MPW matches. *** 

AJW 11/21/97 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Super Delfin vs. Dick Togo & Shoichi Funaki & MEN'S Teio 11:29 of 18:02. Gran Hamada and Shoichi Funaki started this match off on the mat, but Hamada made the tag to Super Delfin pretty much as soon as he got the upper hand. Delfin had the AJW logo on his mask for this match, which was a really cool detail. Once The Great Sasuke was in the ring, Kaientai DX started implementing their main mission for the match, which was destroying Sasuke. KDX showed a lot of viciousness in their attack on Sasuke. In particular, Dick Togo showed no remorse whatsoever. Funaki was really good in his role as mercenary, and MEN'S Teio's devious mind only made KDX more dangerous. Finally, Sasuke made the tag after a lot of suffering. Delfin hit a swinging DDT off the second rope on Teio, and Hamada hit the same move on Funaki in the opposite corner. Sasuke re-entered the ring way sooner than he should, but he's a little bit crazy, as we all know. Sasuke even hit a totally awesomely crazy Asai moonsault on Togo that caused Sasuke to land in a row of chairs. A particularly cool spot occurred when Teio came off the second rope and Hamada caught him in a wakigatame, which Teio sold well, but Togo came to Teio's rescue. In the end, it was Delfin with the pin over Funaki. Overall, this was a very good match. Of course, it had a bit of a different vibe, since it took place at another league's show, but they all worked hard and gave the fans their money's worth, while at the same time putting over MPW as an interesting product. ***½  

MPW 1/16/98 Sapporo Nakajima Sports Center: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Tiger Mask IV vs. Dick Togo & Shoichi Funaki & Super Boy 20:33. Unfortunately, Dick Togo would stop appearing for MPW after this match, as WWF had become his main league (unfortunately, Shoichi Funaki and MEN'S Teio would also be joining WWF soon), but Togo still gave a strong performance here. Super Boy was a luchador from Mexico who spent most of his time in California, and he was a deceptively agile worker. Shoichi Funaki was very determined and focused whenever he was on the attack. Gran Hamada worked hard, and he was arguably the most impressive of his team overall. He showed a lot of intensity when he was on offense. Tiger Mask IV was quite good, and he was good at being Tiger Mask (which is something he was better at than Tiger Mask II and Tiger Mask III). He did a good job contributing to the match, both on offense when he was hitting well-placed offense and on defense when he was selling well. His tope suicida was spectacular. The Great Sasuke was working with a bad knee, and that made a big part of his segments involve the heels working over his leg. This was actually Sasuke's last match for a while, as he needed some time off to get his knee healed. Sasuke would be back wrestling in August of that year. Apparently, Super Delfin temporarily took over as the leader behind the scenes while Sasuke was absent. The pace of this match was not too slow and not too fast, as they seemed to focus on trying to make everything they did meaningful and interesting. The heels worked together very well, much better than the babyfaces, who seemed overwhelmed in this match, with only Hamada really standing a chance against the heels in this match. Of course, the main story was Sasuke's injury, and they incorporated that well into a match that was generally very good. ***½ 

MPW 3/1/98 Takaishi Osaka Rinkai Sports Center: Gran Hamada & Naohiro Hoshikawa & Masato Yakushiji vs. Shoichi Funaki & MEN's Teio & Yoshihiro Tajiri 8:38 of 17:28. This match featured a lot of exciting, non-stop action. Everyone worked hard, and was into what they were doing. Unfortunately, this was the final month Shoichi Funaki & MEN'S Teio were in Michinoku Pro before joining TAKA Michinoku and Dick Togo full-time in WWF. Gran Hamada worked hard, and his reliability has been very important in MPW with everyone seemingly departing. Big Japan Pro-Wrestling's Yoshihiro Tajiri fit in perfectly with the Michinoku Pro guys here, as he showed his tremendous athletic ability. Masato Yakushiji did some exciting flying, and Hoshikawa showed his improvement and his intensity. All six workers certainly contributed in a positive way. What was shown looked really good, but only half the match was shown though. ***½ 

NJPW 2/5/99 Sapporo Nakajima Taiiku Center: Gran Hamada & Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Kendo Kashin 15:41. Norio Honaga's loyalty to NJPW once again was rewarded, as he was now a referee. Jushin Thunder Liger playfully mocked Dr. Wagner Jr.'s Mexican lucha libre style after he worked a nice sequence with Wagner. The interactions between Liger and Wagner were worked very well, as you'd expect from them. Hamada and Wanger obviously also had very good moments against each other. Kendo Kashin was the weak link in this match, but Gran Hamada tried his best to carry Kashin, and to keep the action interesting when he was in there with Kashin. Liger tried to toughen up Kashin a bit. Liger deserves credit for really being into what he was doing and not mailing it in. In the end, Wagner got the pin over Liger. It was a pretty good match overall, and the finishing minutes were strong, but other than some fun little moments, it felt like just another pretty good juniors match and not the very good match you'd expect from a tag match involving Liger, Hamada and Wagner. Couldn't they have swapped Kashin for Koji Kanemoto or Shinjiro Otani, since those two were stuck in a meaningless six-man tag in the second match on the card anyway? Having Kanemoto or Otani in this match instead of Kashin would have been a plus for sure. *** 

NJPW 2/6/99 Sapporo Nakajima Sports Center: Gran Hamada & El Samurai vs. Shinjiro Otani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa 11:26. Norio Honaga was once again the referee. The work was generally good in this match, especially whenever Tatsuhito Takaiwa wasn't in. Takaiwa was okay-ish, but he clearly didn't have the same level of ability as the others. One of the worst things Takaiwa did in this match was just standing there, not paying attention and letting El Samurai tumble on the floor when El Samurai went for a pescado near the very end of the match. Gran Hamada and Shinjiro Otani showed a lot of fire, and they were already showing attitude against each other before the match even started. Otani and Samurai also worked interesting segments against each other, as expected. Otani's work in 1999 was a step down from his 1996-1997 work, but it wasn't nearly as uneventful as his work in Zero1. Otani hit a tremendous springboard dropkick near the finish. All in all, this was a decent match that was pretty good at times. **¾ 

NJPW 5/25/99 Ishikawa Industrial Exhibition Hall #3, Best of the Super Juniors Block A: Gran Hamada vs. Jushin Thunder Liger 10:08. This match-up was a particularly interesting one, since it involves two junior heavyweight legends battling each other, and it's a rematch from their excellent 8/4/94 match. Hamada would end up finishing second in Block A, below Koji Kanemoto, who would end up (undeservingly) losing to Kendo Kashin in the tournament final, resulting in the 1999 BOSJ winner (Kashin) being the most disappointing of all the winners of the 1990s. While this Hamada vs. Liger match was a good match, it was slightly disappointing considering these two had an excellent match in 1994, and they simply didn't live up to what you'd expect from these two. Still, Hamada showed quite a bit of intensity when he worked over Liger, and Liger was into what he was doing. The early matwork portion was seemingly just for the sake of it. Later in the match, Liger started hitting some really cool moves, including a top-rope fisherman's buster that nearly got him the win. In the end, however, it was Hamada who got to finish off Liger via a top-rope DDT. ***  

NJPW 5/31/99 Osaka Furitsu Taiikukaikan: Gran Hamada & El Samurai & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Kendo Kashin vs. Super Shocker & Masao Orihara & Masaaki Mochizuki & Tatsuhito Takaiwa 13:47. This was a match that took place during the Best of the Super Juniors tour. By 1999, the NJPW junior heavyweight division wasn't quite what it once was, but the BOSJ tour featured some talented performers from other leagues that would make for some interesting match-ups against the NJPW workers. Mexican luchador Super Shocker was super spectacular here. Masao Orihara also did particularly well here, and he was able to show off his speed and agility. Dr. Wagner Jr. was arguably the most outstanding one on his team. Despite not being on top of his game during this edition of the BOSJ tournament, Gran Hamada was very good and effective in this match, since he was able to do what he does best, adding to a multi-man match with spurts of explosive action. El Samurai was his usual trustworthy self, and his work certainly helped make this a fun match. Masaaki Mochizuki was quite okay. Kendo Kashin and Tatsuhito Takaiwa didn't really add much to the match, and they were the two least impressive workers. Overall, this was a really good junior heavyweight eight-man tag that was an opportunity for Orihara and especially Shocker to really shine. ***¾ 

MPW 11/7/99 Sendai New World Tennis Club: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Minoru Fujita & Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Sasuke The Great & Curry Man & NANIWA & Sumo Fuji 19:04 of 24:08. Minoru Fujita moved around really smoothly, and he showed a lot of enthusiasm. Gran Hamada and The Great Sasuke were very good in their roles as the babyface veterans. Masaaki Mochizuki was quite good. Sasuke The Great (Masao Orihara), a heel counterpart to The Great Sasuke, was the most outstanding one on the heel side. Curry Man showed surprisingly little energy and a lack of sharpness in this match, making his showing a bit disappointing. NANIWA and Sumo Fuji were okay-ish, but they were the two least impressive ones here. Ryuiji Hijikata randomly interfered while wearing a Sasuke-esque mask near the end of the match, and did a couple of poorly executed cartwheels. This match was really fun to watch overall, because it featured plenty of good action, and it's always nice to see Hamada involved in a MPW match that was very good. ***½  

MPW 12/21/99 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Jinsei Shinzaki & Gran Hamada vs. Masaaki Mochizuki & Magnum TOKYO 18:39. Jinsei Shinzaki, who was a regular in AJPW at this point, gave quite a decent showing here. Gran Hamada was effective and useful, as he usually is in a tag team setting. Masaaki Mochizuki was pretty good, and one of the best workers of the match. Magnum Tokyo was okay, but he dragged the match down a bit when he was in. Mochizuki tried some matwork when he was in against Shinzaki, and Hamada tried some matwork when he was in against Magnum, but Mochizuki and Hamada really should have done some matwork when they were in the ring against each other, because that could have been more interesting. Mochizuki's flying and leaping were some of the best moments in the match. Hamada executed a top-rope huracarrana on Magnum. A little bit later on in the match, Magnum executed a top-rope huracarrana on Hamada, but unlike Hamada, Magnum didn't follow it up with anything useful and wasted everyone's time with a bit of prancing around. It was cool to see Hamada execute the Hamada cutter off the second rope, which is a move he seemingly only recently had started adding to his repertoire. It was good to see that Hamada was still so motivated at this stage of his career, and he was one of the most outstanding workers in this match. This was a good match, but it would have been nice to see more Hamada vs. Mochizuki, but then again, what we got was more interesting than extensive segments of Shinzaki vs. Magnum would have been. ***¼

MPW 1/9/00 Sendai New World Tennis Club: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke vs. Masaaki Mochizuki & Tiger Mask IV 17:12 of 20:32. It appears Hamada was usually no longer involved in the best matches on the card at this stage of his run in MPW, but he was still involved in several good matches. The Great Sasuke's opponents tried to keep him on the mat, and at times, it seemed like Sasuke was interested in trying to keep the matwork going, but he decided that he didn't really feel like matwork. Tiger Mask IV was solid in his role as Tiger Mask. While this wasn't necessarily a top performance of his, his selling was quite solid here. Hamada and Sasuke worked well together as a team, but Masaaki Mochizuki got little help from his tag team partner. Mochizuki worked hard and hit some spectacular moves. After seeing Mochizuki, Hamada and Sasuke doing cool moves, it seemed Tiger felt inspired to do something cool too, which he eventually did when he hit a nicely executed plancha off the top to the floor on Sasuke. The final minutes were a bit less smooth than preferred. The finish came when Hamada hit a second-rope Hamada cutter on Mochizuki, which resulted in a TKO win for Hamada. While it was cool that Hamada's move was getting put over, a TKO finish after an Ace crusher felt a bit like an overblown finish. ***¼ 

MPW 3/1/00 Nagoya Nakamura Sports Center: Gran Hamada vs. The Great Sasuke 16:59. This was a match to celebrate The Great Sasuke's 10th anniversary as a pro wrestler, and he fittingly faced his teacher, Gran Hamada, here in a match that took place exactly 10 years after Sasuke's debut, which was a time when Sasuke was still wrestling as Masanori Murakawa (and a bit later as MASA Michinoku) and Super Delfin, who was the opponent in Sasuke's debut match, was still known as Monkey Magic Wakita. Here in this 3/1/00 match, Hamada and Sasuke did a lot of slower and methodical work early on. Hamada worked over Sasuke's right arm a little bit, but that didn't really lead to anything. Sasuke tried to dropkick Hamada when Hamada went for a pescado, but both ended up not connecting. Sasuke made up for it by hitting a beautiful Asai moonsault and a missile dropkick. At this point, the action started picking up, and it became clear that the early portion of the match was just them killing time. The work was really good throughout the match, but only the second half was living up to the standards you'd expect from these two. Sasuke took a big bump after a backwards 450 splash. Hamada hit the second-rope Hamada cutter, a move that got Hamada the TKO win over Mochizuki in the 1/9/00 tag match, but here it didn't give Hamada more than a 2-count. Hamada realized he had to do something desperate, and executed an armbar on Sasuke's left arm for the win. ***½

ARSION 4/7/00 Kawasaki City Gymnasium, Dream Mix II: Gran Hamada & Ayako Hamada vs. El Apache & Faby Apache 7:04 of 8:47. This was really good for a mixed match, which is the type of match that isn't always taken seriously, much less worked seriously. This was worked seriously, and they were all business from start to finish. The action was exciting and fun. Everyone worked hard, and everyone showed respect for each other. Ayako Hamada showed some really spectacular moves, which made her arguably the most outstanding one in this match. The fathers did really well for themselves though, especially considering the stages of their respective careers they're in. Gran Hamada was really good, as expected. El Gran Apache was surprisingly good, as he's one of those workers most people either don't know or have forgotten about. Faby Apache showed she was willing and trying to learn to grow as a worker, and she was quite a bit better here than during the first ARSION shows in the late '90s. It's a shame this was so short, but at least this was all non-stop exciting action while it lasted. ***½ 

NJPW 7/9/00 Aomori-ken Budokan: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & Kendo Kashin 5:51 of 15:17. The fans were behind the Michinoku Pro team, this wasn't a big surprise because of MPW being popular among wrestling fans in the Tohoku region in Northeastern Honshu. Gran Hamada worked hard in this match, and The Great Sasuke seemed quite into this match. One of the highlights was Sasuke executing a tremendous tope con giro on Jushin Thunder Liger, a worker he was quite familiar with and had battled several times in very memorable matches. Liger carried his team, obviously. Kendo Kashin wasn't even close to the level of the other three workers, so his contribution wasn't noteworthy. Somehow Kashin got the submission win over Sasuke though. This match probably would have been quite a bit better if El Samurai would have taken Kashin's place. Still, the five minutes shown of this bout looked very good. ***¼ 

MPW 12/15/00 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & MEN'S Teio & Tiger Mask IV vs. El Apache & Pentagon Black & Rocky Santana 14:02. This was a decent lucharesu match that had quite a bit of brawling, but it never turned into a full-fledged brawl. Gran Hamada and Gran Apache did well here, and they were actually the two most impressive performers in this match. Pentagon worked hard and enjoyed bumping around, and he even bumped into rows of chairs a few times. Of course, this Pentagon should not be confused with Pentagon I (Espanto Jr.) or Pentagon Jr. (the current Pentagon, who is not related to any of the previous Pentagons). Rocky Santana was clearly past his prime and didn't have much to offer, but at least he tried. MEN's Teio did everything he did quite well, but he wasn't the most outstanding performer. Tiger Mask IV was solid throughout the match, and he was particularly strong in the final minutes of the match when he seemed to display more energy and showed some good stuff. The workers involved in this match all seemed to inspire each other by all showing a lot of enthusiasm, which made the final portion of the match quite enjoyable and fun to watch. This was a pretty good match that somewhat surprisingly had quite good action during the final stages after merely a decent start. ***

MPW 5/4/01 Iwanuma Citizen Sports Center: Gran Hamada & Tiger Mask IV vs. Dick Togo & The Great Sasuke 15:57. Dick Togo & The Great Sasuke, former rivals, were now a team. Gran Hamada showed good intensity when he was working over Sasuke on the mat. Sasuke gave a good showing, but he wasn't as spectacular as he used to be. Tiger Mask IV was quite good, and he helped make his segment against Sasuke early in the match feel serious. The best part of the match was Gran Hamada and Dick Togo battling it out with a lot of tenacity, like they used to do in the good old days of mid 1990s MPW. Togo is probably the opponent Hamada faced most in Hamada's long and illustrious career. Gedo was in attendance, and he was sitting next to the timekeeper. Eventually, Gedo interfered and caused this match to end in a no contest. It was a crappy finish to a match that was potentially on its way to be very good. ***

Toryumon 7/1/01 Kobe World Kinen Hall, UWA World Trios Title: CIMA & SUWA & Big Fuji vs. Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Tiger Mask IV 16:03. Toryumon was a lucharesu league that was founded in 1997 by Ultimo Dragon, one of Gran Hamada's students. This was nowhere near as good as the classic Michinoku Pro trios matches, simply because other than CIMA, Crazy MAX weren't even close to being on the level Kaientai Deluxe was. To their credit, SUWA and Big Fuji seemed to try their best to help out the hard-working CIMA. Fuji's work is rather basic, but he wasn't as sloppy as SUWA. After Crazy MAX dominated quite a bit, Tiger Mask and The Great Sasuke hit some spectacular moves, including a tope con giro by Sasuke. Gran Hamada worked a good amount of the match for the MPW team, and he played a pretty big role in keeping things going whenever his team was on offense. The match was getting more action-packed near the end, but a crappy finish got CIMA the pinfall over Sasuke. At least the screwy finish had a great wrestler doing a cool move, as Dick Togo hit his flying senton on Sasuke and then quickly ran off before the referee would notice. ***

MPW 8/19/01 Sendai New World Tennis Club Special Outdoor Ring: Gran Hamada vs. Pentagon Black 10:04 of 11:43. Pentagon Black hit Gran Hamada with chairs on the outside, and Hamada juiced. Hamada's blood ended up on Pentagon's mask too. Pentagon's offense wasn't the most sophisticated, but he hit a nice slingshot somersault splash. Hamada sold Pentagon's attack well, but once he was on the offense, he was able to show good intensity while still coming across as a wounded man. Hamada tried to rip Pentagon's mask off, and Hamada gave Pentagon a piece of his own medicine when he attacked Pentagon with a chair on the outside. It appeared Pentagon juiced through his mask. Like a true lucha rudo, Pentagon took a big bump when Hamada executed a back body drop. Pentagon hit a quick powerslam, and a bit later on, he hit a tombstone piledriver. Both workers put it over quite well that they wanted to destroy each other, and neither wanted to leave the loser. In the end, Hamada finally got the win by executing an armbar. Technically this wasn't all that special, as it was mostly brawling and the difficulty level wasn't super high for a lucharesu junior heavyweight match in the 21st century. However, the intensity shown by both men really made this feel like a struggle and a war, which helped draw the viewer into what they were doing and ultimately resulted in this being a good singles match. ***¼  

Project X 2/11/02 Nimazu Kira Messe: Gran Hamada & Kazuya Yuasa vs. Ikuto Hidaka & Tomohiro Ishii 15:15. This match took place in Atsushi Onita's Project X. Tomohiro Ishii eventually became a pretty big star in NJPW, but here we got a chance to see him during his pre-NJPW years. It appears he already had a fondness for hard-hitting exchanges, as he displayed here against MPW worker Kazuya Yuasa. The wily veteran Gran Hamada had some interesting exchanges with Ikuto Hidaka in this match. When they were in the ring together, the action and execution was at its best. Hamada was young at heart and quite youthful-like as a worker for a 51-year old man, as he was still able to do exciting athletic moves and sequences. Hamada's headbutt exchange with Ishii kinda was like Hamada's exchanges with Togo, except Togo in his battles with Hamada was more energetic than Ishii was here. Ishii was quite decent overall here though, and he was good in his role as heavyweight power worker, which makes it no surprise he eventually became a NJPW superstar. Ishii mostly worked with Yuasa, who was okay, but didn't do anything to write home about. Hidaka was into what he was doing and his performance was fun to watch, and he was probably the worker of the match. This was a pretty good match overall and it's nice to see Hamada was still involved in interesting matches like this in 2002. ***

MPW 5/5/02 Sendai New World Tennis Club: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Tiger Mask IV & Hideki Nishida & Kazuya Yuasa vs. Dick Togo & Masao Orihara & Ikuto Hidaka & Tomohiro Ishii & Macho Pump 15:58. Ikuto Hidaka was very impressive, and he wouldn't have looked out of place in the classic group of MPW guys from the mid 1990s. Dick Togo was once again the leader of a heel stable, but this time it's not quite on the level of Kaientai Deluxe, of course. One of the problems was that the members of the Far East Connection were pretty good at being a heel unit, but they weren't able to keep things super interesting at all times. Part of the reason is obviously simply the fact that they're not on the level of KDX as workers. Of course, very few (if any) heel stables will come close to KDX's greatness, but it's hard to not make the comparison. Either way, this was a fun match. Ikuto Hidaka was very impressive, because he was constantly trying to add something positive to the match, and he really helped Togo a lot, which meant it wasn't just Togo carrying his stable. Masao Orihara was also good, but this wasn't his best showing. It was good to have him on the heel side though, because he added quite a bit of experience to his team, and he was actually the one on Togo's team who had been wrestling the longest. Tomohiro Ishii had the motivation, but he wasn't quite ready to be the Ishii we know these days, as he didn't quite have that tough guy allure yet. Macho Pump was not very impressive in any way, and if he wouldn't have been part of the match, it wouldn't have made any difference. One the babyface side, The Great Sasuke was good in his role as the veteran leader. Even though he never really adapted his style as well as a Jushin Thunder Liger or as an Ultimo Dragon, what seems to ironically work in his favor is that people have lowered the expectations they have from post-1990s Sasuke and Michinoku Pro in general, so that makes his role easier in these matches. Gran Hamada is one of the most impressive workers over 50 years old you'll ever see. Tiger Mask IV seemed quite motivated and seemed eager to show what he could do, but he didn't play much of a role other than the beginning stages of the match. Hideki Nishida was impressive, and he seemed like a worker to keep an eye on. Kazuya Yuasa didn't really do anything special, and he felt more like an extra. Just when you'd think they're going to build towards a finishing stretch, it was over when Togo pinned Yuasa. It was pretty good, but it kinda felt underwhelming in a way. ***

AJPW 9/21/03 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & Keiji Muto & Tomoaki Honma & Ryuji Hijikata vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Masa Fuchi & Kazushi Miyamoto & Taichi Ishikari 21:48. It was cool to see Gran Hamada in the same ring as Toshiaki Kawada, but we never got to see Hamada vs. Kawada! Oh well. The experienced Masa Fuchi started off against Tomoaki Honma. Fuchi was on the receiving-end of a stiff shot to the side of the head, which caused Hamada to get mad at Honma. Kazushi Miyamoto and Honmo battled each other, and they seemed to enjoy wrestling each other. Up next, Hamada vs. Fuchi was an interesting battle, but of course, Keiji Muto couldn't resist putting the attention on himself. Luckily, everyone told Muto to shut up and Hamada vs. Fuchi happened. Hamada showed his toughness and Fuchi put it over well. We got Kawada vs. Muto, probably the battle the average fan was mostly looking forward to. Muto kept attacking Kawada's leg, and Kawada sold it superbly. When Kawada and Muto were both down, this opened the doors for everyone else to come in and stomp away onto the leaders, Kawada and Muto. We finally got to see Ryuji Hijikata and Taichi Ishikari in the ring, as they battled each other. Hijikata slapped Ishikari around, and instead of showing mercy, Hijikata tagged in Hamada, who backdropped Ishikari. Muto showed mercy for Ishikari, as he pretended to stomp, but really gave Ishikari a little break to breathe. Honma entered the ring and worked over Ishikari a bit, but Miyamoto couldn't wait to wrestle Honma again. Fuchi wanted to show Honma that he could still go at the age of 49, and beat Honma up on the floor and in the ring. Kawada was next, and he chopped the living daylights out of Honma. With Honma down, all of a sudden Ishikari felt like he had a chance to try. His stomps on Honma were so weak, that even Muto entered the ring with a look of surprise on his face, but Muto contained himself and went back onto the apron. Kawada no-sold Honma's elbows, not out of disrespect, but simply to challenge Honma to fight back harder, and it worked. As a reward for getting it, Kawada gave Honma a backspin boot in the head. Honma was now bleeding. Miyamoto quickly entered the ring to face Honma once again. They slapped each other's chests and did a little power struggle thingy. Kawada booted Muto's face and suplexed him. Kawada blocked Muto's attempt at the shining wizard. Ishikari showed more confidence now and executed a bridging German suplex on Hijikata, who countered it into an armlock before the ref could count to three. Bonus points for Hijikata for executing that neat looking counter. Hijikata proceeded to torture Ishikari until Ishikari got the ropes. This was apparently the cue for all Hell to break loose. Hamada hit a pescado on Fuchi, and everyone started brawling. Hijikata hit a wicked fisherman's buster on Ishikari for the win. To celebrate this moment, Europe's "The Final Countdown" was played. This may not have been a great match, but it definitely was lots of fun to watch. If they really wanted to make this excellent, they probably should have added about eight minutes more of really good action, and at the very least a minute of Hamada vs. Kawada. ***¼      

dragondoor 7/19/05 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & Shodai Tiger Mask vs. Solar I & Ultraman 11:44. Gran Hamada teamed with the original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama, and they were two of the pioneers of lucharesu back in the early 1980s. Without them, there probably wouldn't have been shows like dragondoor in the 2000s. They teamed together and they wrestled each other, but here in this 2005 match, they teamed together against two old school luchadores. Solar I and Ultraman are both former opponents of Tiger Mask I, so this was a match filled with quite a bit of nostalgia, to say the least. Satoru Sayama was 47 years old, Solar was 48, Gran Hamada was 54, and Ultraman was 58. Hamada and Solar did some mat wrestling in the beginning of this legends match. Sayama hit a nice back kick that Ultraman sold well. Everything these workers did was pretty good, especially considering their age, because they were working a style they excelled in when they were in their 20s and 30s. It wasn't a very good match, because they did everything a lot slower than they used to do, but it was fun watching these legends in the ring together. Most wrestling fans appreciate nostalgia, and it appeared that the crowd appreciated the efforts of these veterans. Sayama and Hamada showed quite a bit of agility, and Solar mostly focused on technical wrestling. Ultraman, probably the least legendary of these three, did well for himself, and he hit a nice tope suicida. The lack of speed in this match wasn't too much of a problem, because they clearly tried their best here. This was a decent match, and while the wrestling wasn't that noteworthy, it was interesting to see how these guys were doing in 2005 and it was fun watching these legends wrestling each other. **½     

Toryumon 6/23/06 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Ultimo Dragon & noki-A & Mil Mascaras vs. Gran Hamada & Ayako Hamada & Yoshihiro Tajiri 15:55. This is one of those match-ups you thought you'd never see, except in your dreams or in your fantasy booking league. However, Toryumon made it happen. Mil Mascaras was the first Mexican wrestler who really became a superstar in Japan back in the 1960s and 1970s. noki-A (Mika Akino) was Ayako Hamada's former tag team partner back in Ayako's glory days in ARSION in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The legendary Gran Hamada was the man who trained Ultimo Dragon, the founder of Toryumon. Yoshihiro Tajiri was one of the few Japanese wrestlers who became famous after achieving success in the United States, which kinda makes him a Japanese version of Art Barr (because the American Love Machine started being talked about as a top performer only after achieving success in Mexico in the early-mid 1990s). As soon as the fans heard "Sky High," a song from 1975 by the British band Jigsaw and pretty much the international anthem of lucharesu, they showed their appreciation and respect for the legendary Mil Mascaras, who was 63 years old at the time of this match. The two joshi workers started the match off. Ayako and Akino tried to relieve the fast-paced type of stuff they'd do in their ARSION years, which was a cool thing to do. It was a joy watching Gran Hamada and Ultimo Dragon wrestle each other. Hamada's team really helped put over Mascaras as a big deal, and it was eventually Tajiri who stepped into the ring and had the honor to oversell for the legendary Mascaras, which resulted in Tajiri making Mascaras look like a million bucks. Mascaras was a lot slower than he used to be, but he was in very good shape for a 63-year old man. Ayako and Akino stood out in this match, which wasn't very surprising, since they were the youngest workers and still in their respective primes. Ultimo Dragon and Tajiri worked a good sequence together. The final minute had the most fast-paced action. The match ended when Akino pinned Ayako. This was a pretty good match, and it was a lot of fun to watch. ***

Showa Puroresu Legend Nostalgic Major 5/12/08 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & Shodai Tiger Mask vs. Sammy Lee Jr. & Yuki Ishikawa. This was a show that mostly focused on paying tribute to wrestlers from the era of Emperor Showa, who was the Japanese Emperor until his death in January 1989. The two pioneers of 1980s lucharesu, Gran Hamada and Satoru Sayama once again teamed up. One of their opponents was Battlarts legend Yuki Ishikawa, and the other opponent was spectacular young talent Kota Ibushi, who mainly wrestled in the DDT Pro-Wrestling league at the time. Ibushi's gimmick here, Sammy Lee Jr., was a tribute to Sayama, who wrestled as Sammy Lee in England around the year 1980. Ibushi was obviously the quickest, most agile and most spectacular worker in this match. However, the fans came to see the legends. Gran Hamada rules for being a 57-year old man with blond highlights in his mullet in the year 2008. Hamada never acted old during his in-ring career, and that's probably why he was able to have such a long career. Shodai Tiger Mask is one of the all-time greats, and him getting the pinfall over Ibushi felt completely fine. This wasn't a very good match, but it was an interesting match-up that turned out to be a decent wrestling match overall. **¾ 

K-Dojo 6/18/11 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, Kaientai*DX Final Countdown FINAL: Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & FUNAKI & MEN'S Teio & Hanzo Nakajima vs. Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Super Delfin & Jinsei Shinzaki & Yone Genjin 13:50. Kaz Hayashi was in Kaientai's corner. These guys really made a strong effort to try to recreate the magic of mid 1990s MPW. Of course, since this was 2011, they didn't quite reach the same level of quality as their mid 1990s matches did, but it definitely was good and fun to watch. To give you a bit of an idea of the experience level of the workers involved in this match, the youngest wrestler was 37 years old (TAKA Michinoku), and the oldest wrestler was 60 years old (Gran Hamada). While the work was good, and the execution was good, this really felt a lot like a nostalgia match. That being said, despite almost all of the workers involved no longer being at their absolute peak as workers, you could say that all these guys could still go and have a good match together, and that's why this was still a good match overall. 60-year old Hamada executing a huracarrana on Funaki was quite a cool highlight. The Great Sasuke is probably the tag team partner Hamada teamed most often with in Hamada's long and legendary career. Yone Genjin was traditionally one of the worst workers of all the MPW regulars, but here he stayed out of the way for the most part, and he didn't ruin things. The best part about him participating in this match was that he was the one who got pinned after Togo hit a flying senton off the top rope. This was a fun match, and for a 2011 match involving these wily veterans, this was darn good. ***¼ 

RJPW 7/21/11 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke vs. Ultimo Dragon & Super Rider 13:02. Super Rider used to wrestle in DDT and some other leagues, but he had started appearing on RJPW shows since 2007. The Great Sasuke and Ultimo Dragon totally carried this match. Their work was what made this match as good as it was. Gran Hamada was really good for a 60-year old wrestler, but he was obviously far removed from his peak years. Super Rider was okay, and he didn't embarrass himself by any means, but he was definitely the least interesting worker in the match. Super Rider also didn't quite know how to adapt to Hamada's age when he was working Hamada, making their brief interactions look awkward. Sasuke and Dragon showed a lot of respect for their mentor, Gran Hamada, which was cool to see. Super Rider totally redeemed himself when he hit a tremendous tope suicida on Sasuke near the finish. In the end, it was Dragon getting the pin over Hamada that ended this match. This was a pretty good match overall. ***     

1972-1978: N/A (hoping to find footage)

1979-1980: Very Good

1981-1984: Excellent

1985-1989: N/A (hoping to find footage)

1990-2002: Excellent

2003-2008: Very Good

2009-2011: Pretty Good

2012-2015: Decent

2016: Okay

It appears Gran Hamada wasn't very active as a wrestler in the late 1980s, as he was focusing more on training future stars. It's possible that he didn't wrestle even one match in the year 1987, but records from the 1980s are in general not nearly as complete as in later decades, so this is merely speculation. Either way, it appears there's no footage available of any of Hamada's matches from 1985-1989, which was also the period he started focusing more on training wrestlers. There's also no footage available of 1972-1978, which were his first few years in NJPW and the first few years of his career, which is somewhat understandable, since matches weren't recorded as much as nowadays back then.

His best in-ring years were 1981-1984 and 1990-2002, with his work in 1990-1996 standing out as his very best work. In 2003, he started slowing down a bit, but he was still able to show flashes of excellence, especially in tag team action.

Despite only having worked a couple of excellent singles matches, Hamada was very effective as a tag team worker who added a lot of energy and excitement when he was in tag team action. He wrestled in several excellent and some great multi-person (trios, atomicos and 10-man) tag team matches. Hamada's best matches were multi-person tags featuring some of his best students in the lucharesu style he pioneered, and Hamada was able to contribute to those matches in a significant way and show that he was still an excellent worker in those days (the 1990s). While Gran Hamada is not necessarily a top candidate for the greatest junior heavyweight ever, he was certainly consistently excellent throughout his prime years, which was quite a large number of years. He's very underrated, of course, since wrestling fans seem to have forgotten about him or don't know him, but hopefully this Hall of Talent article will change that. Hopefully people will now also have a better idea of what his career was like and have a better idea of some of the top talent Hamada wrestled in the many leagues he wrestled in throughout his career. Hamada truly should be remembered as one of the most legendary names in junior heavyweight wrestling.

NJPW 2/10/83 Gamagori Civic Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & Kuniaki Kobayashi vs. Tiger Mask & Kantaro Hoshino 13:10 shown. ***¾ 

UWF 4/17/84 Tokyo Kuramae Kokugikan, WWF Light Heavyweight Title: Perro Aguayo vs. Gran Hamada 13:10. ***¾ 

Universal 3/5/90 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA World Light Heavyweight Title: Gran Hamada vs. Perro Aguayo 6:54, 4:39, 7:54. ***½ 

WWA 1990 Gran Hamada & Yoshihiro Asai & El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas & Blue Panther & Fuerza Guerrera 7:20, 3:16, 3:45. ****

Universal 6/1/90 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA World Light Heavyweight Title: Gran Hamada vs. Perro Aguayo 11:39. ***½  

Universal 6/7/90 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & Perro Aguayo & Kendo vs. Texano & El Signo & Negro Navarro 9:18, 6:47, 4:40 of 6:55. ***¾ 

Universal 11/13/90 Gunma: Gran Hamada vs. Blue Panther 14:57. ****

Universal 11/14/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Gran Hamada & MASA Michinoku & Monkey Magic Wakita 9:52; 4:18; 5:02. ***½

Universal 3/14/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Gran Hamada & El Hijo del Santo & Dos Caras 11:00 of 13:48 shown. ***½  

Universal 11/23/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada vs. The Great Sasuke 9:05. ***¾

Universal 3/13/93 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Title Match: Gran Hamada vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. 10:04 of 10:35. ***½  

NJPW 8/4/94 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan: Gran Hamada vs. Jushin Thunder Liger 16:49. ****

NJPW 4/13/95 Nagaoka City Kosei Kaikan: Gran Hamada & Koji Kanemoto vs. Wild Pegasus & Shinjiro Otani 15:13. ***¾ 

NJPW 2/25/96 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan: Gran Hamada & El Samurai & Black Tiger II vs. Koji Kanemoto & Shinjiro Otani & Dean Malenko 16:26. ****

NJPW 3/14/96 Kyoto Prefectural Gym: Gran Hamada & Jushin Thunder Liger & El Samurai & Wild Pegasus vs. TAKA Michinoku & Koji Kanemoto & Shinjiro Otani & Tokimitsu Ishizawa 25:57. ****¼ 

NJPW 4/5/96 Tokyo Korakuen Hall Jushin Thunder Liger & Gran Hamada & El Samurai vs. TAKA Michinoku & Koji Kanemoto & Shinjiro Otani 19:11. ****½  

MPW 8/18/96 Aomori-ken Min Taiikukan: Gran Hamada & Jushin Thunder Liger & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shoichi Funaki 13:23. ****¼ 

MPW 9/23/96 Towada City Gymnasium: Hamada & Delfin & Astro & Otsuka vs. Togo & Shiryu & Funaki & Collins 17:10 of 19:55. ****

MPW 10/10/96 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan: Gran Hamada & Super Delfin & Masato Yakushiji & Tiger Mask IV & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shiryu & Shoichi Funaki 32:07. *****

MPW 10/19/96 Ichinoseki Cultural Center Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Masato Yakushiji vs. Dick Togo & Shiryu & MEN's Teio 18:01. ****

MPW 11/12/96 Maebashi Gunma Sports Center: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Super Delfin vs. Dick Togo & Shiryu & MEN's Teio 16:12. ****¾ 

Inoki Festival 12/1/96 Yoyogi National Gymnasium #2: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Super Delfin & Naohiro Hoshikawa & Masato Yakushiji vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shiryu & MEN's Teio & Shoichi Funaki 16:40. ****¾ 

MPW 12/16/96 Fukuoka Hakata Star Lanes: The Great Sasuke & Hamada & Delfin & Naniwa & Yakushiji vs. Togo & Men's & TAKA & Shiryu & Funaki 23:16. *****

MPW 1/14/97 Sapporo Nakajima Taiiku Center: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Super Delfin vs. Dick Togo & MEN'S Teio & Shiryu 21:43. ****¼

MPW 3/16/97 Yahaba Townsman Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Super Delfin & Masato Yakushiji & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shoichi Funaki & MEN'S Teio & Masayoshi Motegi 22:27. ***¾ 

MPW 5/5/97 Nakayama Townsman Gymnasium: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & Shoichi Funaki & Hanzo Nakajima 17:44. ***¾  

Battlarts 1/21/97 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Masato Yakushiji & Gran Naniwa vs. Dick Togo & TAKA Michinoku & Shiryu & MEN'S Teio 20:40. ****½

MPW 1/16/98 Sapporo Nakajima Sports Center: Gran Hamada & The Great Sasuke & Tiger Mask IV vs. Dick Togo & Shoichi Funaki & Super Boy 20:33. ***½  

MPW 3/1/98 Takaishi Osaka Rinkai Sports Center: Gran Hamada & Naohiro Hoshikawa & Masato Yakushiji vs. Shoichi Funaki & MEN's Teio & Yoshihiro Tajiri 8:38 of 17:28. ***½

NJPW 5/31/99 Osaka Furitsu Taiikukaikan: Gran Hamada & El Samurai & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Kendo Kashin vs. Super Shocker & Masao Orihara & Masaaki Mochizuki & Tatsuhito Takaiwa 13:47. ***¾ 

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