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Graham Crackers

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Everything posted by Graham Crackers

  1. Graham Crackers
    This is very good but feels small. The rematch feels epic but has some spotty selling. I wish we could combine the two and get a truly great match. I'm convinced Tenryu could have had a great match with anybody though to Kojima's credit he's actually good in this one.
  2. Graham Crackers
    This is a good big star tag and not much more than that. The hesitation at the start builds some tension, the work throughout the middle is pretty smart, and we get some good nearfalls without going overboard.
  3. Graham Crackers
    Y'know, I wouldn't have guessed that Kikuchi vs Liger would be a better dream match than Misawa vs Hashimoto when it finally happened but here's the proof. This is pretty easily the junior heavyweight feud if the decade and while this isn't my favorite skirmish it's still one of the best tags NOAH ever produced. This match in particular is good because it gives is plenty of what the people want (Liger vs Kikuchi) while using the younger wrestlers to their strengths. Inoue was a much better as a spunky rookie than he would be at any other point in his career and while Kanemaru is still getting all of his shit in the interpromotional hatred gives him more of a focus than usual.
  4. Graham Crackers
    Same here. The FIP at least gives this more structure than the previous year's G-1 tag league final but the offense and selling are similarly flat.
  5. Graham Crackers
    I only really enjoy Takaiwa matches when he is in the ring with wrestlers I like. Sometimes that isn't even enough for me. Unfortunately I'm in the Marufuji hate camp so as you can imagine, I didn't like this.
  6. Graham Crackers
    Ohtani is somewhat entertaining but there isn't much here for me. I watched this when I went through all of the nominated BJW matches last year and this was close to the bottom. And I wasn't really in love with the top BJW matches either.
  7. Graham Crackers
    I think I may have hated this more than dawho5. One of the worst matches nominated for this project, probably because I like Akiyama so I had higher hopes than I would have had for TenKoji vs Nagata/Iizuka. It's so sad that this is the NJPW that people supported in the Purotopia polls and not legitimately awesome shit like Hashimoto vs Ogawa. Man, I wish I hadn't been too busy to nominate stuff.
  8. Graham Crackers
    This match is everything I could have wanted from two of my favorite wrestlers of the 2000s. I love the NOAH midcard during this era and this is probably the best singles match the midcard ever created. Honda's mat wrestling is so spectacular. He is ridiculously strong and you can see it in every takedown. In order to build Honda's mat skills as a threat to Akiyama they really pushed the matwork during this tournament. I doubt anyone else in NOAH would have looked as comfortable on the mat with Honda as Ikeda. Probably a top 5 NOAH match.
  9. Graham Crackers
    Prowrestlinghistory.com lists Bart Vale defeating Fujiwara for the championship 3-20-92, but no defenses. That was at the Florida show that Vale promoted. Was that actually a PWFG title or something Vale owned?
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  14. Graham Crackers
    The ultimate Ogawa performance is the GHC title match against Kobashi. Ogawa is a dick and Kobashi gets revenge leading to Ogawa blading which due to it's rarity feels like a huge deal. To add to the Tenryu mention, he is excellent at sneaking in punches in traditionally clean strike exchanges. It gets awesome heel heat in most of his NJPW appearances.
  15. Graham Crackers
    Sasuke missing the dive is great. All of his bumps are great. love that fucking guy. This is a pretty uneven affair. I'm not big on Jado but Gedo is alright and as a team they are passable but not really impressive heels. On top of that Tiger Mask is pretty flat as the face in peril. Nothing special here.
  16. Graham Crackers
    I appreciate that they work the opening of this match as if these wrestlers are hesitant to make the first move. That kind of thing takes time but is something I wish I'd see in more multi-man matches. It helps to create the illusion of unpredictability that I think you want in this kind of matches. This has some fun moments but also had stretches where I was losing interest. I think the 2002 triple threat trios matches are better but I'm not in love with them either. I don't think any Toryumon or DG will make my top 100 but if anything does it'll be one of those.
  17. Graham Crackers
    I guess this could have been worse but it was still pretty bad. Mutoh is broken down and Nagata just isn't a consistent enough worker to get anything good out of him. The same way we get frustrated with a wrestler getting bogged down by Triple H's formula, a lot of guys get caught up in Mutoh's formula and Nagata just isn't the kind of wrestler who can make that work.
  18. Graham Crackers
    So no, this obviously isn't as good as their 2000 match but it's still really good. It has it's flaws, such as the super tiger driver that I assume was just thrown on because they felt they needed a big epic highspot but the structure is there to make it compelling.
  19. Graham Crackers
    Here's that Mutoh legwork I hate again. Tenryu's selling isn't even enough to make me care about that stuff. This isn't as strong as the Kawada match and I don't think that'll even make my ballot. At least Tenryu's big offense is cool.
  20. Graham Crackers
    Outside of the AJPW vs Zero-One feud the best stuff post split All Japan gave us was Tenryu murdering the next generation. Tenryu vs Araya is always fucking awesome. Their clipped WAR bout from '98 looks awesome and they have some fun singles in AJPW but this match gives us the fullest picture of what these two could do. Araya fights back against the old man and earns the rub he gets in this match. dawho5 is right, the rest of the match isn't at the same level as those exchanges but fuck if I haven't gone back and watched this match a few times just to see those two go at it again.
  21. Graham Crackers
    The selling didn't bother me as much as the match just being kind of dull for the most part. 2001 was really the start of Kawada's descent as he was regularly forced to work with duds in the ring. Sure, he'd occasionally get fired up against the right opponents but a lot of his stuff has begun to turn into Kawada by numbers, which is especially apparent when watching this again. A couple of Kojima's spots are interesting but Hashimoto,Tenryu, and even broken down Takayama did a much better job of carrying him to great matches.
  22. Graham Crackers
    This is a really good match but it's a step below the classic Battlarts tags. The interpromotional angle helps with team FMW making good heels. Yone is a really good face in peril and Ishikawa looks like he could snap anybody in that ring in half.
  23. Graham Crackers
    This is an improvement over their previous match. In this one they manage to do the kind of early athletic junior exchanges you expect without as much of the cute stuff. The selling is as great as last time and pays off with an even more dramatic finish. Minoru catching AKIRA with the armbar after getting hit with the splash is one of the best near submission spots I've ever seen in an NJPW junior match.
  24. Graham Crackers
    Man, this was great and has a real shot at my top 20 for the decade. The double knockout finish isn't something I'm crazy about but I think they actually did a better job of pulling that off here than they did in a great match like Fujinami vs Maeda. In a way the way these guys sold the beating that they were giving one another and the exhaustion the exhaustion caused by it reminded me of Mantell vs Lawler.
  25. Graham Crackers
    This was much better than the NOAH junior tags of the same time period but still wasn't without flaws. Mainly Takaiwa doing his usual Takaiwa bullshit (too many powerbombs, going back on offense too easily). That said, Dick Togo getting busted open gave him a lot more to focus on than he would usually have. He was pretty great punching and clawing at the open wound. I enjoyed the Hidaka vs Hoshikawa matches that came before this, even if they aren't anything incredible. They get a lot more mileage than you'd expect out of leg work in a juniors match and Hoshikawa is surprisingly consistent when it comes to selling it though this being a tag match may have made that easier as well. The combination of Hoshikawa's leg injury and Togo bleeding should have made this more dramatic but the crowd was pretty dead for the first 2/3's of this. A hotter crowd or a different comeback for Takaiwa after being hit with the senton could have elevated this to greatness but as it is it's merely good.
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