In the first of what will hopefully be a long-running series of interviews with luminaries of the grappling scene, mat maestro Daniel Makabe, in a chat recorded just before this year's Wrestlemania weekend, takes us through a hand-picked mixtape of his favourite puro matches, and tells us how they influenced his career and his thinking. With a diverse array of wrestling styles covered, it's a wide-ranging discussion that was an absolute blast to record, and the tangents on punk and football are very much in keeping with the PPP ethos. We learned a lot, and are sure you will too.
MATCHES:
4:29 - Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Kengo Kimura, Kantaro Hoshino and Umanosuke Ueda vs. Akira Maeda, Nobuhiko Takada, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Osamu Kido and Kazuo Yamazaki (NJPW, 26 March 1986) - dailymotion.com/video/x60ilzd
27:53 - Akira Hokuto vs. Shinobu Kandori (AJW, 2 April 1993) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrSQyoEfAvQ
44:03 - Atsushi Onita, Katsutoshi Niiyama and Mr. Gannosuke vs. Mr. Pogo, Hideki Hosaka and The Gladiator (FMW, 25 September 1994) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDvvTsuQufw
1:06:51 - Shinjiro Otani (c) vs. Kazushi Sakuraba (UWA World Light Heavyweight Championship) (NJPW, 17 June 1996) - https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x760nmb
1:17:56 - Mitsuharau Misawa and Jun Akiyama vs. Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Taue (AJPW, 6 December 1996) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1KJ102doqE
1:29:50 - Volk Han vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (RINGS, 22 January 1997) - https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1wvyj0
1:46:11 - CIMA, Curry Man and Super Boy vs. Minoru Fujita, Jody Fleisch and Shiryu II (Michinoku Pro, 21 December 1999) - https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xe1n8b
2:17:31 - Minoru Tanaka (c) vs. Takehiro Murahama (IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship) (NJPW, 20 April 2001) - https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5ozmrr
2:28:15 - Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (Futen, 24 April 2005) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxRLkhX_yMs
