Loss

Oooohhhhhh yyeeessss, it's Ooooooowwwweeennn Haaaaaarrtttt. Owen showing up looking like a pretty typical early 90s pro wrestler standing next to Paul Bearer just looks so wrong. But whhyyyyyyy woooooouullllldd yyooooouuuu sttaaaaaannnnd iiiinnn yyyyyoooooouuuuurrrr brrrooooottthheerr'ssss waaaaaaay?

The opening minutes of Hansen and Kobashi rolling around on the mat were awesome. I liked that they got over that they wanted to tear into each other without tearing into each other. They just very aggressively wrestled each other, with Hansen taking it to the mat. Then we get Misawa/Baba. Baba's smirk after taking a Misawa forearm is tremendous. Baba alternates between being a little fun and a little embarrassing. There are some spots he does pull off really well, but between the moves, he's exposed, because it takes so long to set up the spots properly, and it's hard to buy Misawa selling so much for Baba considering how much we all know he can do. Misawa/Hansen and Kobashi/Baba pairings are short-lived for the most part until around the 10-minute mark. Chalk it up to the fact that he is a ridiculously hard worker or whatever else you want, but Kobashi opposite Baba is really solid. Misawa was content to sit in Baba's arm wringers and eat the same takedown half a dozen times, but Kobashi makes Baba work, including a moment late in the match when he shocks the hell out of me by making Baba take a rolling cradle. He's not at full Kobashi speed, but he keeps the stuff he is doing far more interesting and doesn't pull his chops much at all. Yes, a side headlock is fairly basic move by Kobashi standards, but it's also worked well. I also get a kick out of him bumping big for Baba's hiptoss. He actually reminds me of Fuchi in his style here. By this point, Hansen and Kobashi are tired of tempering their animosity and start going after each other pretty aggressively. Brawling leads to fighting on the floor, we get a couple of hot minutes, then it's time for the next pairing. Misawa/Hansen you really want to be better than this, but Misawa is on cruise control for the night. The guy has probably had more great matches than any wrestler in history, so it's hard to fault him too much for taking the occasional night off. Really, at least until the admittedly fun finishing run, this is much more a series of singles pairings with guys who happen to be teaming than it is much of a *tag team* match. Hansen and Baba decide to act like a team briefly 20+ minutes into this and again when we get to the final stretch, but Misawa and Kobashi, the actual established top-drawer team, really don't. It's puzzling. Dual track commentary distractions aside, this was a blast to watch. Not so much even as good match (even though it turned into one in the last 15 minutes) as much as an enjoyable one and something worth seeing for many reasons: * Building my excitement for Hansen/Kobashi at the Carnival * Comparing what Misawa and Kobashi do with Baba * Seeing what a Misawa "Bret Hart doesn't really care that this is a Coliseum Video exclusive" performance looks like

Ok, I feel mean. Mr. Wrestling X, Gregor and I are joking. We're just having fun based off of Jerry Von Kramer's admittedly very funny Greg Valentine post. That's all it was intended to be.

This is really hard to argue against. Once the Gladiators were killed off, it was a domino effect. The Rock & Roll Express were hated by fans and out of the promotion within a year. Jackie Fulton was replacing Tommy Rogers and mucking up the Fantastics within two years. Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin were calling themselves the Freebirds when they were just a sad imitation. And the destruction of the Midnight Express is pretty documented. Talk about a backlash - this was parasitic booking that eventually destroyed every tag team in the promotion.

I think what hurt Valentine more than anything was dying his hair black. He was always a huge draw among blonds, but they felt betrayed by that angle and tuned out in droves. The WWF realized this and made him blond again after a few months, but the damage was done.

Michael Hayes beating the Russian Assassin at Chi-Town Rumble '89 just killed the Russian Assassin as a draw. Notice the NWA was never able to run Moscow after that. This is fun.

Well yes, I think even people who didn't think the Extreme Rules finish was the end of the world would agree that's pretty stupid.

Togo is an incredible athlete, and I love the fast-paced sequences. Delphin hits a beautiful dropkick to set up a comeback after Togo dominates for a while, then follows with a beautiful dive to the floor. But for some reason, so much of the comedy and fun seems to disappear in Michinoku Pro singles matches. They work methodically here, to a point where it seems like they're going against their instincts. Things pick up toward the end, but not as much as you'd think. I would like to see a singles match from MPro that really grabs me at some point. Outside of Sasuke/Caras in '95, it hasn't really happened yet. They stay completely away from the comedy of the multi-man matches completely, which I don't understand. Chaotic post-match scene! I was wondering when/how Togo changed his look.

I am sick of watching 30-minute Manami Toyota tag matches, so I was dreading this, but this was a lot of fun. Bull and Kyoko work really well as a team, and Bull and Aja on opposite sides of any match is always worth watching. Some of the things that are at times grating about Toyota and Kyoko (and even Aja) at times were tempered by Bull's presence. Her offense on Toyota looks brutal, including some nasty looking shots to Toyota's back before she and Kyoko did a doubleteam reverse slingshot suplex, if you can picture that! I wouldn't mind seeing a series of singles matches between Bull and Toyota at some point. What's teased here is like an even better version of Kong vs Toyota. Even Kyoko and Toyota are having a really good night and work the mat more than you'd expect from them. I love Kyoko's inverted surfboard (for lack of a better name for that hold) and her coherence with Bull as as a partner is really fun. Bull has all sorts of tricked out holds to apply to Toyota, and Toyota's shrieking fits the context of the match instead of being annoying because the holds look legitimately painful. I wouldn't say Bull carried the other three, but she did encourage the best in all of them. She's so desperate to stop Kong that she brings nunchucks into the ring. Even when she's selling, Toyota and Kong doing the stereo headbutts to her back is the highlight of their teamwork. 1994 seems to be a great year for her.

For the first part of this, they mostly work holds and then have quick flashes of highspots between the matwork. That's when the match is at its best. Yamada's kicks are so brutal. Hasegawa is much more convincing and much better when she is taking a beating than she is when she is dishing one out, so the match suffers a little when she is in control or when they're working back and forth. I love Sakie, but I don't need to see her on offense very long. She is meant to sell and tease comebacks. Yamada throwing the kitchen sink at her while she finds a way to fight back - for brief spells - is when this match works best. While some of Hasegawa's runs of offense are really fun, she isn't quite peerless in that regard at this point, so it doesn't stand out as much. Hasegawa is such a natural underdog babyface, and she's far from a bad offensive wrestler, but she comes across as a C-level Toyota when she's throwing everything at Yamada. The sprint-style back and forth exchanges aren't where she excels. As a result, when they are working even, the match is good, but nothing special in the context of other 1994 AJW matches. When Hasegawa is in control, the match drops in quality and is fun at times, but bland at times. When Yamada is in control and Hasegawa gets to sell and build sympathy, this is really great. Add all of this together, and the end result is a match that I thought would have a wow factor, but instead is just a very good match with some really great moments. It's hard to call something this strong disappointing, but it was disappointing only because they abandoned things that were working at times to make sure Hasegawa got her stuff in. I guess Hasegawa was heavily influenced by Toyota and wanted to wrestle like her, not realizing that she was a different type of wrestler with a totally different sensibility. You could edit the best parts of this match into an all-time classic, and I do think these two could have pulled one off had they just narrowed their scope. The finish had some emotion to it, because Hasegawa is such an awesome sympathy magnet that you believed that she really needed to get to a hospital quickly. The more she sells, the more she gets over.

By the same token, if Vince had no control over outcomes, would he want Brock to win?

Yeah, his "I'm angry while standing in the ring watching this video recap of my current feud on the Titantron" face is mid-range.

Need to watch the show, but I'm looking forward to seeing the top three matches.

Yes. I'll eat those words.

Of course. Knowing that Cena has already lost a huge match that took him down a notch within the last month, and knowing that you'd like to try to get the fanbase more on the same page so he's getting cheered more, do you understand that this was a little more complex? Brock probably should have won, but could Cena withstand being squashed like that just after losing to Rock? Phil made the Hash/Ogawa comparison. We all know how that ended up for Hashimoto in the end.

Anyway, my point in that post was that I think that same mindset is part of the reason they wanted Cena to win. They are trying to win over those who boo him. I do think the Rock loss hurt Cena, and I think a second high profile loss in a row would have hurt him even more. It's why doing this match so soon probably wasn't the best idea. Brock could have gotten a win over someone in a better position to eat a few losses, while Cena could get a few big wins under his belt to bounce back from the WM loss so he enters the Brock match in a stronger position. A lot of it is booking mess WWE themselves have created, but I don't envy the challenges of presenting wrestling that appeals to the masses in 2012, considering that significant, non-disposable demographics that the promotion *has to have* in order to thrive each want conflicting things.

WWE is going through a weird transition at the moment and I'm curious if anyone has picked up on it. Fans are too smart now and see too many things coming. WWE can't be 100% reactive to fan whims and has to whet appetites for things they can deliver as much as they give people what they want. The puppets become the ones pulling the strings over time, and that's anathema to everything wrestling has ever been. A lot of the old tricks just don't work anymore because even casual fans are a little too knowledgeable of wrestling's tropes and booking patterns. It's a balancing act. I think a lot of the recent head scratchers in match results, right or wrong, can be attributed to Vince trying to stay a step ahead of the audience. There have been some mistakes, but I think that's the general idea, and we're getting some experimentation. WWE is trying to stay smarter than their audience, which is a challenge when wrestling is so overexposed. Yes, the predictable, safe route might have been the best route here, but I can understand how a wrestling promoter would see doing something that everyone expects to see and has predicted in advance as not the most desirable direction to go. I don't think the idea of a wrestling promotion is to give fans everything they decide they want independently -- rather, it's to make them want certain things that they are capable of delivering, then pay it off at the right moment. I also think the biggest challenge in booking pro wrestling - just from what I have observed as a fan through the years - is not in figuring out the right thing to do. That's usually the easy part. Instead, it's in satisfying the need of those building the angles to feel like they've done something creative/meaningful/original/clever/profound/that keeps morale up/that makes everyone happy/that surprises people/whatever else. I'm rambling, and I'm not really doing it to defend WWE's decision to have Lesnar lose his first big match, as much as I am trying to explain what I see as some of the challenges any promoter presenting pro wrestling in 2012 faces. Am I making any sense? I feel like I'm on the cusp of a point that I'm not quite making.

Rock winning at Mania bothered me more than Cena winning here, for what it's worth.

A traditional wrestling match filled with back and forth momentum shifts and Lesnar eeking out a win would have been dumber, so yes, there are definitely worse things they could have done.

Brock will get over by throwing all of WWE's conventions on their collective head. Winning and losing doesn't matter as much as it should, sadly. If the idea from here is that Brock doesn't care about winning and losing, that he cares more about maiming people, there are tons of possibilities and Brock maintains his mystique. You'll never go broke betting against WWE coming through on things like this, but I'm not convinced yet that they've dropped the ball.

Anyone watch this in the presence of super casual fans? I'm curious what the masses thought of a main event that sounds like it was worked in a different style.

I think Brock should have won too, but based on how people are describing the match, I am willing to hold judgment on this until I have seen the match itself. Pointing out that how the match is worked was equally important to the result is something specific Dave has said. It's valid, and right now, I feel like I don't know enough to criticize it. The Bryan pic annoys me because he's so ridiculously polemic.

The current picture on f4wonline.com will make you want to punch Bryan Alvarez in the face. Check it out and you'll see what I mean.

Yes, that was a big oversight on my part and should have gone on the set. You definitely talked it up enough that it should have gone on. I wish I remembered the circumstances. I'm not sure if it's something that was cut in haste at the end of a long run of cuts, or if it was something I failed to add to the master list to begin with. It will go on the supplemental. As for the other four matches that don't really matter, each of those four matches was recommended. The only one that wasn't specifically recommended got ***** in the WON.

I have already said I wish it could have gone on and that it should have gone on. But when the only argument for something is that it's historically significant, I take that as including a clip to show that it happened, not including the entire thing. Yes, there are absolutely ** or **1/2 matches that should go on in full regardless of how good they were because they were so important, and we've included quite a few of those on previous yearbooks. I don't know that I truly got that this was something on par with Hogan/Sting at Starrcade '97 in terms of significance.