Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

Dylan Waco

Moderators
  • Posts

    10174
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Dylan Waco

  1. Ricky Santana w/Rex King v. The Heartbreakers w/Invader v. California Studs Haven't watched these in a while but remember loving both, especially the Studs match. I would also recommend the entire Bobby Jaggers series which I believe is on YouTube, and I still contend he had shockingly good matches with Mr. Pogo.
  2. Watched a ton of IWA this week and well....turns out this guy was good as fuck down there to the point where if I was a week-to-week viewer of t.v. during his run I think I'd be hard pressed not to include him. There are absolutely criticisms to be made and I will get them out of the way now. It's possible that what is uploaded to YouTube is merely a "greatest hits" and doesn't reflect what he did as a whole in PR during his peak. The style he worked is a style some might find dated, as it was sort of a hybrid of late era ECW and 80's WWC. While I have seen him in good non-gimmicked matches, I've not seen him in a very good one, let alone great one. Having said all of that this guy had a BIG TIME aura in PR and projected it huge in his matches. He was super athletic and spry for a guy his size, but didn't shoehorn in "athlete" spots at the expense of the match. He was very strong as both a face and a heel in brawls, and did a great job mixing in big moments throughout while also putting together matches that had a since of escalation which is one of main things I look for in matches of that sort. If you are someone who puts a ton of stock in peak matches and peak performances the matches v. Glamour Boy Shane, Slash Venom, and Vampiro really are very impressive, and add to the argument that he's a legitimately great wrestler at least when stipulations are involved. I was also impressed with him against people like Apollo and others. In IWA he was basically the best and most logical version of Mike Awesome you can imagine. If you are into guys who stand out and feel ahead of his time he's someone you should watch.
  3. I always liked him on the Southern indie scene and think he would have been the next guy Cornette would have pushed if SMW had stayed open, but I really nominated him because he feels like a guy that El Boricua might want to vote for on the strength of his Puerto Rico run as Slash Venom. I have watched a lot of IWA in the last week and he was an absolute nut down there, complete lunatic bumper, and big spot brawler, that worked that style better than 99% of guys who have gone on to run it into the ground. When you consider when he was doing this stuff he really comes across as ahead of his time or at the very least a guy who was excellent at bridging the gap between different eras. Pretty much anything he does v. Banderas is entertaining/really good, and one of those matches features one of the craziest bumps in wrestling history that apparently forced the companies hand into turning him face.
  4. Nominating Flash Flanagan/Slash Venom via Yearbook threads.
  5. Freelance Wrestling airing a show live now on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDCY-aW5LmA
  6. I saw Edge and Randy Orton live too many times to be enamored of them.
  7. I am a big fan of his to the point where I was practically begging a fairly successful promoter I know to book him just this week, but I don't see a case. I'd be much more inclined to vote for someone like Biff Busick or Drew Gulak than him, and I don't think either one of them have threads (for the record, I wouldn't vote for either of them either).
  8. Very underrated wrestler, who with the right chances would have probably had a good shot at making my list. The problem is he really didn't have enough of those chances. I have actually scoured the web to see what is out there of him before because in Portland he was really good. Seriously, as the Assassin he was a super effective heel, who was a solid bumper, could work with pace or a more methodical style, was excellent in tags and trios, held his own as a single, and had some cool offense to boot. I could see someone like Matt D rating him on the strength of that run and I really can't argue against it, other than to say it's not enough for me. I mean I really like the Cuban Connection team, and has a few fun bouts on YouTube from WWC, but breaking into my top 100 is really hard.
  9. I want to see Brandon's list more than anyone else here.
  10. I went ahead and reviewed a few matches and nominated him for my buddy Boricua who said he was going to consider him for the bottom portion of his list. Just based based on the brief sampling I can see why. The guy was a really effective, super over babyface, who took offense as well as I have ever seen anyone take it. On top of that I think he straddled the fence pretty well between the older blowjob babyface types like Ricky Morton, and the modern indie stars that emerged in the beginning of the 00's. The Banderas ladder match is a legitimately great match of it's sort in my view, though I concede that it's a match type which is so overexposed that I'm not sure how much others would like it. There doesn't appear to be a ton of his prime on tape which is a shame, because you can see from what is out there that he's at minimum a very good wrestler, and may have been in the upper tier of wrestlers globally in 2001. I can't wait for Boricua to make a more detailed argument for him.
  11. Discuss Here.
  12. Nominating for my comrade El Boricua: Glamour Boy Shane Sewell Match Reviews Glamour Boy Shane v. Ricky Banderas - Ladder Match 2001 Wild, heated, brutal, and dramatic ladder match here. If you are tired of the ladder match tropes you might not be completely enamored with this, but the unique setting helps it, and If this exact same match had taken place in the WWE around the same period it would be remembered as a classic match of it's kind. Both guys really rise to the occasion here. Sure the selling is selective, but not anymore selective than the average match like this, and I actually think Shane introducing some authentic and traditional babyface fire comebacks added to the match a great deal. Shane is absolutely awesome in this taken offense, as he leans into everything, sells everything dramatically, and does a great job making some of the more typical ladder match spots look organic. Banderas drops some absolute bombs in this and does not give a fuck at all - at one point he tosses a ladder from the ring onto Sewell in one of the most violent and dismissive spots I've seen in some time. He also hits some crazy spots off the top, plus a completely insane frog splash off of an awkwardly leaning ladder. The build to the finish of this is really good, as we get a couple of murderous looking electric chair spots by Sewell to Banderas off the ladder, a nice hop spot on a missed elbow drop, Sewell taking the big crotch bump on the ropes, and then somehow fighting back to win by avoiding a shot on the ladder and leaping to wildly pull the title down as the crowd goes nuts. Banderas is really great at these spotfest brawls, and Sewell was excellent in this. Glamour Boy Shane v. Sean Morley - 1997 Former tag team partners here, in an electric, but somewhat subdued match until the stretch run. Sewell is a very good sympathy babyface and is yet again selling the impact of every big spot really well. A lot of the work in this was relatively simple, but it was good simple that established the stretch run well. I thought they went a bit to "my turn, your turn" down the stretch, but there were some effective near falls especially on the big Morley splash. The finish seemed a bit off to me, but I still thought this was a good match. Glamour Boy Shane v. El Lobo - 2001 Very good, out of control brawl. Once again you have Sewell taking really nasty and tight looking bumps on guardrail spots and other high impact moves which is his real strength as a worker from what I can tell. He is also really good here reeling off flurries, and he throws these great counter attack punches and kicks when given openings that really get the crowd behind him. I liked the crossface spot as a big drama moment, though I wasn't in love with the immediate counter into it from Shane as a hope spot (wasn't bad, I just would have liked more space between point A and point . Still this had a real sense of escalation, some cool comeback spots, and a surprisingly satisfying finish when it looked like a screwjob was imminent. Sewell is really good and I wish there was more of his prime easily available online.
  13. Chad nominated, so I'm interested to see if he's someone he is seriously considering or not. It's hard for me to be objective about Cabana because of my personal disdain for him, but I don't want to go too overboard with the hate. Yes his schtick is hammy and overdone, and yes I have seen him drag great workers down to his level (he's the only guy I saw Finlay have a truly bad match with during his indie tour), but I've also seen him in good matches over the years. I think at his best his biggest strength is that he really does have a connection with a certain type of indie fan/audience and as a result he can have some very strong moments of babyface fire. If pressed I'm sure I could find a reasonable amount of Cabana matches I really like, and I think at one point he was a good worker, though I don't think he was ever a great one. Still he's the kind of guy I could see some people including as a lower tier pick so I'm fine with him having a thread.
  14. Discuss Here.
  15. Discuss Here.
  16. Discuss Here.
  17. I tweeted about Nikki being by far the best worker on the show last night (this was during her match). It got something like 40 retweets. Of those 40 people, I'm not sure 5 are on this board.
  18. Dylan Waco

    Jimmy Rave

    The ROH one, though I thought this years was a low end MOTYC
  19. I have no faith in this show at all which means it will probably be good
  20. Dylan Waco

    Samoa Joe

    Went back and watched some select matches from his peak recently, and I really think it's going to be hard for me to leave him off my list. There are guys who I really like and respect being touted on a few years from the 80's, who I think have resumes that are paper thin next to Joe's (to take one example, Magnum T.A.). Watching a match like Joe v. Rhino v. Monty Brown, which is a TNA hardcore match, where I don't even remember the context, it was pretty amazing how exciting the match felt and how much Joe being Joe added to it. I'm not saying it's must see or anything like that, but if a match like this happened on Raw this week people would be falling over themselves to praise it, and I'm not sure it's even a top fifty Joe match from his 3-4 year peak. I have nothing against Lesnar, and Brock is working on a bigger stage, but Joe gave off a similar vibe to me, and had much better matches.
  21. Watched a shitload of Tamura over the last two weeks and I have to say I was shocked at how blown away I was by him. I had watched many of the matches before, and I have always thought highly of him, but I never completely saw him as an elite worker. I was wrong. I made this point the other day in the Takada thread, but to me the two elements that make for a great shootstyle worker are the mastery of the form itself through technique, skill, and craftiness, and a true sense of urgency and immediacy. I think Han is clearly a better stylist than Tamura, but I don't think he works with near the sense of urgency. For Han the form is enough, to the point where he's almost stoic. I joked with Loss about this last week, but to me Han is Misawa, and Tamura is Kobashi minus the crying. That said, the way Tamura works that sense of urgency into his matches is so impressive that I think it would be impossible for me not to rate him over Han. I know there are some who will say that what he did against Vader doesn't really matter much as it wasn't really an expression of him doing what made him great, but I strongly disagree with that. The way he worked his flurries, the tenacious nature of his attack, et. are all completely in keeping with what you would expect out of him if he were working v. a shootstyle master. More to the point I can't imagine Han having that match with Vader. I guess you could argue that as a head to head comparison that is too limited to make a bigger point from, but my reply to that would be that I don't think Han's best performances are as impressive as Tamura's. To me Tamura is an exceptional worker because he tries so hard, his effort is constant, his work unrelenting without being stupidly spotty, or ignoring the importance of build. Han is at least in part a great worker because he is so technically excellent that he can almost be caviler with his approach. It works for him and he'd have probably been dumb to deviate from that. But that difference between him and Tamura is the reason Tamura will be considerably ahead of him on my ballot.
  22. Dylan Waco

    Jimmy Rave

    I went back and watched a lot of ROH era Rave over the last couple of weeks and it seems pretty clear to me he was the best actual heel in the history of that promotion. By that I mean he's the only person in that company who I think was truly hated by the fan base, played on that, and was able to carry his end of matches by relying on the sort of things you would expect out of a heel. I love Danielson, but the "fake heel" criticism that Bix, Kevin Cook, and others used to levy against him really is true - Danielson was a great worker in ROH, he was not really a great heel because he wasn't really a heel at all. Rave on the other hand was sniveling, sneering, heel brat that you just wanted to see get his ass beat. In the particulars the Styles match mentioned above is a legitimate classic with Rave totally rising to the occasion. I'd rate it in the top ten AJ singles matches ever and I hold AJ in very high esteem. Also Jimmy is awesome in The Embassy v. Generation Next War Games match which is really one of the best ROH matches ever to my mind, at least when it comes to capturing a real feeling of escalation and drama. I also loved the entire Punk feud on rewatch. Punk deserves a lot of credit for being...well...Punk. He was over as fuck and it clearly helped the matches. But I thought Rave was right there with him in the ring, probably actually the better of the two in the Cage Match blow off. I also love the Danielson match, and really enjoyed the Nigel match as a match that was a virtual Jimmy carry job (I know that sounds nuts, but just watch the match). His comeback at the Hammerstein is on YouTube and is really a great moment where Jimmy gets the return pop, gives that great "fuck you" look and is immediately the hottest heel there. Match is really good too. I've seen a bunch more of him from this year and he's going to rate very highly for me in 2015, but I'm at the point where after a rewatch I feel really comfortable rating him on my ballot. I honestly think he's a top ten ROH guy, and while that doesn't get you on my list, when I combine it with the stuff in Rampage, CZW, Wildside, and the the last couple of years in the South, he's there.
  23. I'll have more to say when I can watch night two, but night one was in fact a great show. Tons of variety, eclectic stuff, some great vets and up and comers, et. One of my favorite shows of the year top to bottom because it was a perfect mix of the absurd, exciting, and crafty world that is modern indie wrestling when it's done right. Lots of standouts on that show to be sure. I will note that Rave and the rest of the AWE gang were eliminated on Night One because one of the bigger shows in the state of Georgia this year took place in Rome with Rave v. Davey Richards, Chip Day v. Carlito, Dreamer v. Stevie Richards hardcore brawl, Caleb Konley v. John Skyler v. Corey Hollis (who were all on night one of the FIP show as well), plus guys like Murder One, P Dawg Mike Posey, et. on the undercard. Show was said to be very good, they sold out the place at somewhere between 600-700 paid allegedly, but I saw clips on periscope and I would have figured a slightly larger crowd than that. Rave's crazy weekend continues today as he works Davey Vega (who was also in the FIP tournament) for AWE at the final wrestling show at the Atlanta Masquerade club on a show that also has Tommy Dreamer and Moose v. Murder One and Iceberg (I'd kill to see that match), Chip Day v. Adrian Amour, and Team IOU v. Will Huckaby and Joe Black.
  24. Yes Oct sorry, read the file wrong
  25. The Dec one
×
×
  • Create New...