Puro Pourri Podcast

Sarah, David and George are back to pick up where we left off examining Big Egg Wrestling Universe, with special guest martial arts fan Zoë Boyd. While you might think the title of this episode describes our approach to podcasting in general, it’s actually a tribute to one of the odder aspects of the Big Egg card - showcasing amateur wrestling in all its grapply glory. Listen for the bonkers story...

David and George are joined by comrade Luke Healey to do the now traditional rundown of the big January 4th show we all know and love. It's the biggest day in the puro calendar, so sit back, relax as the guys give their views on a truly momentous event for everyone concerned.

Coming in too late for Christmas but just in time for Epiphany (that's what we get for sending it via Hermes), it's the belated 2020 PPP festive extravaganza! Join Daniel, David and a mojito-guzzling Statto as they answer fan questions, play some fun and now very much unseasonal Christmas games, take another trip to the wonderful world of Chinese wrestling, and try to inject some joy into our plag...

Welcome, one and all, to the Puro Pourri Podcast Black Friday Special - midnight opening, everything must go, and we have a limited time-only 3-for-2 deal on obscure Scottish football tangents. Join the lads for a look back at a 1995 show called Kendo Nagasaki's (no, not that one) Vale Tudo in Shotengai, in which the Big Japan roster do their bit for local businesses by wrecking several of their p...

If you’re calling yourself Cuty Suzuki, you’d better be adorable as hell. Fortunately, she was, and a star was born. Joshi wrestlers have been developing ‘idol’ personas to cultivate their following for decades, and pro wrestling uses all sorts of other pop culture to build mainstream appeal. Episode 6 sees David, George and Sarah try to figure out what went on with Blizzard Yuki - AJW’s attempt t...

In another edition of Match Microscope, the boys finally get to talking about the contest that is, in a roundabout way, responsible for the podcast's very existence (in that Statto and an extremely steaming Daniel bonded over it at a RevPro show back in 2015). Anti-Aging Hero Yuji Nagata takes on Akira Taue, "the ultimate mobile tree man" (copyright David Forrest), in a match where the honour of P...

The Shoot. The Incident. The Split. If you love drama as much as we do, welcome to the episode where David, George and Sarah finally cover the messy history of Jackie Sato, Shinobu Kandori and the birth of LLPW from JWP. We also get to rave about some of the most violent matches on the card at Big Egg Wrestling Universe and compare Kandori’s hair with Pat Butcher. Find our sources, match recommend...

Episode IV: A New Hope A long time ago in a wrestling promotion far, far away, Chigusa Nagayo had to retire. She did not approve, and a few months before Big Egg Wrestling Universe she announced a company of her own that would eventually become the next big player in joshi. Welcome to GAEA, whose first few signees are in the early matches that David, Sarah and George are tackling in this episode....

You’ve been waiting for two whole episodes now; finally, some wrestling. We start our deep dive into every match at Big Egg Wrestling Universe with some of the biggest drawing stars in Japanese history - Chigusa Nagayo, Lioness Asuka and Jaguar Yokota were some of the biggest names of the 1980s, and they all made a comeback in November 1994. Meanwhile, David falls in love with a Bison. Enjoy. Find...

A show like Big Egg Wrestling Universe takes a lot of build-up and demands some pomp and ceremony, so here we are, with David, George and Sarah bringing the pomp as we talk about the opening ceremony. Like London 2012, but with less Brunel and more Bull Nakano. Find our sources, match recommendations and more in the show notes: http://www.imaintainthedoublefootstompissilly.com/big-egg-podcasting-u...

Look everyone, it’s another wrestling podcast! Sarah Parkin joins George and David for a special limited series focusing on Big Egg Wrestling Universe, the legendary all-day joshi extravaganza from November 1994. This first instalment whizzes through the story of Japanese women’s wrestling and traces the Road To Big Egg, where more than 30,000 people went to a 10-hour show at the Tokyo Dome years...

George "Statto" Thompson: Vocals, Ukulele, Mandolin, Pennywhistle

Come one, come all and step right up to try your hand at the Puro Pourri Podcast's Big Puro Quiz. Join your fiendish quizmaster George "Statman's World" Thompson as he puts David and Daniel through their paces over five wild and wacky rounds. Give the old grey matter a workout worthy of the AJW dojo by playing along at home, or simply just listen along while the PPP Brains Trust wildly flail aroun...

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...

George, Daniel (at least for the first half before having to attend to his new cats) and David turn their keen yet jaundiced eyes to WWE's annual extravaganza of grappling, glitz and godawful booking in the Triple P's Wrestlemania 36 special. It's a dizzying spiral of boneyards and bollocks as the lads debate who did more to earn a tag title shot out of Austin Theory and the 10-year-old boy who te...

In these tough times, the good old Triple P is stepping up to the penalty spot, ready to ripple the back of your net with a Julian Dicks-style volley of content over the coming weeks. First up on the docket is an unreleased pilot from David’s in-stasis project Purotrash with Grand Exalted Viceroy of Channel Islands World Wrestling, Patrick W Reed (@Patrick_W_Reed). David and Patrick dive headfirst...

Join your host David Forrest for some highbrow literary chat as he introduces his guest George Twigg (who is in no way related to George Thompson of this podcast) to discuss his novel "The Rise and Fall of Rikidozan". In this, interview recorded last year and released now in its entirety for the first time, the author gives some insight into his creative process and influences and answers Twitter...

Coming to you with spicy, topical takes hot off the griddle, David, Daniel and George navigate a course through the biggest event - or, in this case, two events - in the Japanese wrestling calendar, NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 14. In this special edition, recorded as soon as the shows finished and released, of course, within a matter of days, the hosts discuss their inexplicable popularity in the great s...

NOTE: Daniel's sound is fairly fucked up for the first half of this. Still, at least he's audible. After a Christmas hiatus and many group counselling sessions after the general election, the guys are back with the concluding part of their look at Japanese wrestlers in the UK. This episode moves from the World of Sport era into the 21st century, as David, Daniel and Statto rake over Mitsuharu Misa...

The podcast equivalent of a lump of coal in your stocking, the 2019 Puro Pourri Podcast Christmas Special is here. Join the lads for a thorough (and surprisingly sober, in inebriation if not in content) look at the past year's wrestling around the world, as well as a Q&A of wild and wonderful questions from our lovely fans and a discussion of which puro wrestlers most closely mirror the properties...

In this special bonus episode, George and David discuss last month's respective trips to New York and Tokyo, and recount the many wrestling shows they took in while abroad. Join your guides on an open-top bus tour that takes in Statto's incredibly unwise decision to go from JFK Airport straight to a Smackdown taping, lucha libre at MSG, David's ventures into Dragon Gate, Gatoh Move and a weird ind...

Greetings grapple fans! In this episode, David and George (sans Daniel, who is off crowdfunding for his proposed 50-foot statue of Nicky Weaver) take a hiatus from the Match Microscope series to bring the first in a special two-part look at Japanese wrestlers in British wrestling. This edition covers three matches from the World of Sport era, in which future legends of puro, most of whom are bille...

Join David and Statto for a special episode commemorating the 25th anniversary of one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time; the peerless pacing, the titanic strikes, the huge bumps, all of it. It's 06/03/94, what else can you say?

The boys are back for the first in a trio of Match Microscope episodes, our (relatively) quick and snappy deep dives into famous puro matches. First up, we discuss the legendary 1984 NWA title match between horse-faced hunk Kerry Von Erich and notorious country music mogul "Colonel" Jumbo Tsuruta, which sees Daniel, David and Statto cover a horrendously brutal dissection of a human hand, what make...

Join Superstar DJ Rex Haberdasher (definitely not Statto doing a bad 1950s American accent) for a rundown of ten of the best CD singles ever released by pro wrestlers working in Japan. From J-Pop on acid to an Elvis cover to an MMA star's dope flows to about half a dozen songs that sound like 70s cop show themes, and a weirdly high amount of synth xylophone, feast your ears as Finnish metal covers...