I came across this as I was looking through my old tapes for some Bam Neely (a.k.a. …) footage. This was a portion of a great matchup between Minnesota wrestler Lenny Lane and internationally known Japanese wrestler The Great Sasuke (pronounced Sas-kay, I believe). Lane had worked for Michinoku Pro Wrestling in Japan, which was owned by Sasuke. Being in the US for some reason, Sasuke agreed to work a match for Sharkey’s promotion. The fans definitely got their money’s worth.

This match has a lot of significance for me for several reasons:

  • I started getting into the local scene as a fan around 1995, about the same time that Lane started wrestling. I thought it was great to see him get some national and international exposure (this was before he was in WCW).
  • I was there. If you look for the guy with the camera and the greenish colored sweatshirt, that’s me. I had watched a few tapes of Sasuke in action and was amazed by his skill. I couldn’t believe that he was actually wrestling locally.
  • The program I received from this event (see below) had a phone number on the back of it. The number was for Eddie Sharkey‘s wrestling training camp. This is the number I called to become a professional wrestler. The ad looks pretty cheesy by today’s standards (or by any standards for that matter) since it was mostly for a 1-900 wrestling “hotline” with a couple of sentences at the bottom about Sharkey (I have a better looking one, but it wasn’t part of this program). Had some trouble getting the thumbnail link to work, so you’ll need to click here to see it.

Great Sasuke

Within about a month or two of this match, I would be starting training camp with the “Trainer of Champions” in a boxing gym in northeast Minneapolis, MN.

But I’ll save that for another time. Enjoy the match.

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This match originally aired on “Slick” Mick’s Bodyslam Review, hosted by Mick Karch and produced by Al Pabon.