r/PuroresuRevolution

CIMA in DragonGate: left in 2018, taking a good portion of the roster with him, with the promotion more or less erasing him from mention, although reports have surfaced that they are open to him coming back at the moment

Kota Ibushi in DDT: returned to the promotion in 2024, almost 10 years after he initially left to freelance and join NJPW; repeats surfaced that Ibushi felt “hurt” by comments from the current gen (Ueno, MAO) that he was an “outsider”.

Go Shiozaki in NOAH: left in 2025, apparently not being happy with his current place in the promotion (with Naomichi Marufuji firing shots at Shiozaki on Twitter/X) to join AJPW.

I was rewatching some old WWWF tape from the lead-up to the Shea Stadium Showdown, and it really struck me how masterfully that entire student-vs-teacher storyline was handled. Zbyszko played the frustrated protege so beautifully, slowly letting his insecurity eat him alive because he was always trapped in Bruno's massive shadow.

When the turn finally happened during that scientific exhibition match, the heat was absolutely nuclear. Fans were legitimately trying to flip Larry's car outside the arenas. Nowadays, heel turns happen in the span of a three-week television cycle, but they built this tension for months out of pure psychological storytelling. Do you guys think this stands as the gold standard for a slow-burn betrayal, or is there another classic territory-era turn that you think drew even more genuine, organic heat?

Finally got the next part done after a long wait. Part two is in the works to complete episode 5, but as the years have more and more footage to comb through and translate, things are taking a lot longer than earlier episodes.

These are made for the die hard Big Japan sickos, but I think any puro fan can learn something given Big Japan is basically the top indie in Japan until DDT breaks through, and there's tons of cross overs with various other companies and wrestlers. Lots of good stuff in 1999. Ryuji Yamakawa, Tomoaki Honma, and Shadow WX continue to raise the bar to levels we've never seen before in the deathmatch world. Future deathmatch legend Ryuji Ito debuts. Great Kojika and Minoru Fujita have a major falling out. We finally get a wrestling bear... sort of. Good stuff this year.

My Youtube Channel also has a playlist with every episode. Everything is unlisted due to copyright laws getting things taken down immediately. If it's not the Samurai TV logo that I try and cover up it's the licensed music, but I didn't want to compromise and wanted to feature music that was commonly used for Big Japan at the time, a lot of Joe Satriani and Tak Matsumoto among others. Anyway, enjoy.

https://archive.org/details/@dai_nihon_die_hard - Back up links here

It's not necessarly what may be your favourite match.

(I hope this Post gets more than 3 answers)