Tomiichi Murayama does not necessarily believe everything Antonio Inoki says when he describes the places he visits on his diplomatic missions, but the Prime Minister of Japan does continue listening…
Author: Statto
George Thompson, known to his friends as Statto, is one-third of the team that makes up The Puro Pourri Podcast. Following an initial grappling obsession, which ran between 2001 and 2005, he spent large amounts of his time at university distracting himself from work with wrestling, and a smaller number of hours coming up with excuses to discuss the sport in an academic context. He is currently halfway through a novel set in the world of Japanese wrestling after the Second World War, entitled "The Rise and Fall of Rikidōzan", and hopes to finish it sometime in 2017. His man-crush on Katsuyori Shibata continues unabated.
Many people in the grappling business would have you believe that wrestling fans are never happy. In truth, we’re almost comically easy to please. All we want is a show…
Years from now, a one-time great, a former world champion, will admit in his autobiography – proudly! – that he always refused to compete on shows featuring female wrestlers because…
This morning the “sports entertainment” company WWE announced that it would be holding a show at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, the first stadium wrestling event to take place in the United…
With two consecutive shows planned for 14th and 15th August in Korakuen Hall, the TJPW Princess Cup will be among us soon, and what better way to assess the runners…
Statto turns his galaxy brain to the question that has been plaguing the greatest minds for generations: who has the best towel in the history of wrestling? Look, lockdown does…
I love an interpromotional angle, me. NJPW vs. UWFI, AJW vs. LLPW, the much-maligned WWF vs. WCW/ECW “Invasion”. Not so much in terms of the dream matches they create –…
Ever since the start of the UK’s first COVID-19 lockdown, my colleagues at this fine publication and I have been running a weekly video stream every Wednesday night, so we…
For years now, in my mind dating back to the Samoa Joe/Finn Balor feud of 2015-2016, the most tedious part of NXT has been the men’s title scene. This is…
If you’ve not yet read the first two parts of this trilogy, you can find them here and here. Don’t just focus on the attack to the exclusion of all…
If you haven’t yet seen the first part of this series, in which I try to cobble together the Gatoh Move roster into a semblance of a functional football team,…
Football is pro wrestling, as those handsome bastards at the Puro Pourri Podcast observed. It shouldn’t be a surprise. Everything is pro wrestling. But what if pro wrestling was football? …