Hulk Hogan vs. Vader from Superbrawl V... and why I think it's a good one!

By: Chris "Sledge" Douglas

It took me many years before I had the chance to see this match... I believe this match was broadcast during a time when I had NO cable and relied SOLELY on air TV (remember THAT?) and Fidonet groups on BBS's. I had read about it, I'm sure, but I don't remember a thing about what I read or thought at the time. I was just getting out of my childhood Hulkamaniac phase, and was just starting to look into wrestling from sources other than the WWF. However, I was just not interested enough.

Then came the late 90's, and I was ALL about Vader!

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Old School Wrestling Games : WCW's Super Brawl

By:  Rob

Hello fellow fans of pro wrestling,  I'm the new guy on the block.  You can call me Rob,  I'm going to take you on a strange but delightful trip into the past.  We are going to get into our pro wrestling time machine, which strangely looks like Sgt. Slaughter's camo-limo.  Strange.  No, we don't have to get this thing up to 88 miles per hour to use it.  Just sit back and enjoy the show.  So first off, I need to say I was a DIE HARD NWA fan.  I loved The Skyscrapers (both versions), and Mean Mark who later became known as The Undertaker.  Why am I bringing this up? Because this post is going to be about WCW's Super Nintendo Game : Superbrawl.

Like you can see right there, the cover of the game featured the biggest stars in the company at the time:  Ric Flair, Sting and Vader.  This wouldn't be WCW's only game on a Nintendo console though, but I think this was the only Super Nintendo game that we ever saw.   The graphics weren't that flashy, but it was great for when the game came out.  You got to choose from Ric Flair, Sting, Vader, Ron Simmons (He left WCW and became Farooq in the WWE) Johnny B. Bad, The Steiner Brothers and Rick Rude to name a few.

It was interesting navigating the character select menu,  the wrestlers would randomly talk saying their catch phrases and such.  Oddly, they didn't really do it when you selected them they sort of just did it randomly.  Sadly, I never rented this on a console,  I never actually bought the game either.  I had found a ROM file of this game on a ROM site and I used my Super Nintendo emulator to play this. 

With the very limited amount of time that I've played this game, I have to say it was fun.  It's your simple old school wrestling game, you can pull off moves doing various button combinations on your SNES controller.  Don't ask me the button combos, it has been too long since I've played this game and I've probably forgotten them all.   The game play was cool and it was fun.  For me to be interested in game, it had to be fun. I remember sitting on my computer with my gamepad (a usb controller for your computer) drinking Mtn. Dew, eating Cheetos and just rocking out to this game.  This game holds a big place in my heart.  You will never find another game like this and this was the last game that the company FCI ever put out.  That in itself is pretty sad. The graphics were awesome and the game was flashy enough to hold my interest for quite sometime. 

You can't think of old school wrestling games without this game being somewhere on the list.  I know there were better wrestling games out there at the time; the WWF games like Royal Rumble and Survivor Series were pretty good in their own right.  I'm a die hard WCW fan so this game is on the top of the list of retro games.  It's not a gem of a wrestling game, but it's fun to play through and see all the old wrestlers again.  To be honest I wished they'd remake this game on The 360 or the PS4 or something but Vince McMahon holds the rights to everything WCW and I don't see a new WCW game coming out too soon.  On that note, some of the old WCW wrestlers are making it into WWE games, Bill Goldberg is going to be in WWE 2k14.  So there might indeed be hope for a WCW game on a newer console.

I doubt it though.

Here is some game play of the game. 

Credit goes to the original uploader of the video.

Watching this video did bring back some fond memories of the game. I really hope the newer wrestling fans get to play this or just experience it for a little while.  I'm going to actually be going to used game stores and looking for this game.  I really want to experience this game once again.  It was awesome looking back at a game from my favorite wrestling organization.  I just want to thank everyone for reading this little blurb I put up here and next week I'll be back with something.  I think I'll do something on NWA or WCW or both!!

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Antonio Inoki's Most Interesting Matches

By: Chris "Sledge" Douglas

Antonio Inoki is rather prolific.

Before his official retirement, Antonio Inoki was an IMMENSELY popular Japanese wrestler. So popular, in fact, that he has faced almost EVERYONE in the wrestling business from his generation!

From Hulk Hogan to Ric Flair, to Vader and even Muhammad Ali, Inoki has been quite successful, pretty much fitting the 'hero' mold that Hulk Hogan did here in the US. He is so well known in Japan it's absolutely amazing. In fact, when I was teaching English in Japan, my students did this skit where "Inoki" (a student in Inoki facade, replete with the trademark oversized chin) would slap some inspiration into the attendees.

Here, in no particular order, I'd like to present the most interesting opponents (from an American perspective) that Antonio Inoki has ever had.

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Kenta Kobashi Retires...

As of the date of this writing, Kenta Kobashi has just retired.

Perhaps one of wrestling's best athletes and toughest individuals, Kenta Kobashi has carved himself out a huge chunk of the pro-wrestling world.

According to Wikipedia:

Championships and accomplishments

• All Japan Pro Wrestling

• AJPW All Asia Tag Team Championship (4 times) – with Tiger Mask II / Mitsuharu Misawa (1), Johnny Ace (2) and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (1)
• AJPW Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship (3 times)^[1]
• AJPW Unified World Tag Team Championship (6 times) – with Mitsuharu Misawa (2), Johnny Ace (2) and Jun Akiyama (2)
• Champion Carnival (2000)
• World's Strongest Tag Determination League (1993–1995) – with Mitsuharu Misawa
• World's Strongest Tag Determination League (1998, 1999) – with Jun Akiyama
• One Night Six Man Tag Team Tournament (1999) - with Jun Akiyama & Kentaro Shiga^[22]
• January 2nd Korakuen Hall Heavyweight Battle Royal (1993)^[23]

• Pro Wrestling Illustrated

• PWI ranked him #4 of the 500 best singles wrestlers in the PWI 500 in 1996, 2000, and 2004
• PWI ranked him #33 of the top 500 singles wrestlers of the "PWI Years" in 2003^[24]

• Pro Wrestling Noah

• GHC Heavyweight Championship (1 time)^[1]
• GHC Openweight Hardcore Championship (1 time)
• GHC Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Tamon Honda
• One Day Six Man Tag Team Tournament Winner (2002) - with Kenta and Kentaro Shiga^[22]

This man has faced perhaps the best of the best in this crazy world of professional wrestling, and even one particularly nasty opponent outside of the ring as well.

Kenta Kobashi combined powerful holds with deadly strikes to create an offense that was nigh-impenetrable. His toughness both in the ring and out of it was, and is something to be admired.

Not to mention the man takes one hell of a wedding picture:

I first became aware of him through playing Virtual Pro 2 on the Nintendo 64, a game that was a close cousin to the WWF Wrestlemania 2000 that we got stateside. I was struck by his moveset... deadly strikes, vicious chops, a hellacious lariat, a tough moonsault (which took a nasty toll on his knees) and suplexes that could turn your neck into an accordion.

Today I'd like to take this time to look back at his awesome career with some of my favorite matches with Kobashi. Despite my efforts, I cannot for the life of me decide which one is better than the other, so I present this in (mostly) chronological order.

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