For a while now I’ve been making guest appearances on my bud Aubrey Sitterson’s wrestling podcast Straight Shoot. We’ve mostly been talking about New Japan Pro Wrestling, which is incredibly hot right now. The last time we did something different, where I curated a playlist highlighting the legendary “Three Musketeers” from the 90’s in Keiji Mutoh, Masahiro Chono and Shin’ya Hashimoto.

People seemed to dig it.

So when we were brainstorming about the next project to tackle, the topic of the Four Pillars from All Japan Pro Wrestling in the 90’s came up and, well, it was a no-brainer.

So on Thursday, October 5th at 7pm pacific/10pm eastern this goes down, with PWG’s Excalibur as the special guest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD7kMfzNlFs

You can find the full episode description here.

For my friends out there who are already well-versed in this stuff it might be a lot of retread, but the idea is to target fans who have just gotten into Japanese wrestling thanks to New Japan’s rise in popularity and show off some of the other cool stuff that happened, while giving historical context and just talking about really great matches.

I’m stoked on this because Excalibur is a pretty big wrestling nerd as well, whom I’ve spoken with a few times and we seem to have pretty similar tastes when it comes to this stuff, while Aubrey is going in with fresh eyes.

You are urged to watch the matches prior (possibly for the third or fourth time, maybe even for the first?) and follow along while we talk about them.

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Jumbo Tsuruta – June 8, 1990
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsMQi6B7WuA

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa – June 3, 1994 – Triple Crown Championship

Akira Taue vs. Mitsuharu Misawa – April 15, 1995 – Champion Carnival Final
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il3kWE0zO4E

Misawa/Kobashi vs. Kawada/Taue – June 9, 1995 – AJPW World Tag Team Championship
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHsuvDfC8aw

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi – June 11, 1999 – Triple Crown Championship
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rYpK3EoqWI

The good news is if you dig that, there’s a whole wealth of truly great stuff out there. So check it out on the 5th.