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Childs

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Everything posted by Childs

  1. Childs
    I didn't mind the promo cutting. In-match shit talking was part of the style down there -- just as it is in many intense athletic contests. The punch exchanges were as good as expected. Embry's attack on Lawler's neck looked great. I was primed for Lawler's comeback. That said, I agree with Loss that the cage was superfluous and ultimately distracting because it reminded me of the violence I wasn't seeing.
  2. Childs
    Not much to add. This match carried an engaging intensity that would mark the whole Windham-Pillman feud. Pillman was on fire at this point -- best stretch of his career.
  3. Childs
    One of the cool things about '91 is that Jumbo had just as interesting a rivalry with the No. 2 guy in the enemy faction as with No. 1. You don't see that often, but it added a real depth to everything. This was an excellent match. It will be interesting to compare it with the more lauded Triple Crown match from October.
  4. Childs
    Here's a link to the Sports Illustrated story about it if you haven't seen: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/art...91281/index.htm. Kram was a brilliant writer, but as I recall, he took a pretty condescending attitude toward Inoki.
  5. Childs
    John, I agree that Dave should've known better than to use this performance as an argument against Jumbo. MJH, you're being hyperbolic in the other direction. You've watched enough All-Japan to know that Jumbo wrestled differently when he was trying to make a lower-ranked guy shine. He delivered a perfectly sensible performance here and gave Mick some rope. But the speed with which he wrapped up the match suggested that he was not putting him over as any kind of threat. And that's fine; honestly it's a match that has received too much attention because Dave misappropriated it for a dumb argument.
  6. Childs
    I did not like this nearly as much as Loss and did not think it was one of Hogan's strongest performances from Japan. I liked some of the big spectacle stuff, like the double press slams of Hogan and Tenryu. And I'll never complain about double juice. But I never, for a second, got sucked into the drama of the match. Hogan and Tenryu didn't trust the Warriors to sell (rightly, I'm sure.) But their peril never felt particularly perilous. Loss had me excited for this, so it was actually a pretty big disappointment
  7. Childs
    I'm usually on the positive side with shootstyle matches and especially Sano shootstyle matches, but this struck me as just OK. They were terrific athletes, obviously, and they did some neat stuff. I just didn't get any sense of one guy asserting a particular style or of them having to dig particularly deep. It was a good match that failed to meet my high expectations.
  8. Childs
    I have never loved this match quite as much as its biggest fans, but that's not a fault of the performance. I just can't completely get past being irritated by Warrior. On the other hand, this is always a reminder of how much I loved Savage, just the way he moved around the ring. They certainly nailed all the big beats. Savage's five elbows were such a great choice for a huge match on a huge stage. And even Warrior's moments of self-doubt worked with the arc of his character. Sherri gave a great performance, and the Elizabeth stuff delivered one of the great second endings in wrestling history. This was actually a fascinating Wrestlemania between the lower-card highlights, this peak of WWF melodrama and the jingoistic semi-misfire that was the main event.
  9. Childs
    I can't imagine them doing any better with a tough gimmick, and those kinds of matches are always fun/memorable.
  10. Childs
    I had never seen this before for whatever reason, but it has to be one of the best Wrestlemania openers. It wasn't quite as good as Rockers vs. POP from the previous year. As Loss said, it was more of a babyface selling performance by the Rockers and didn't give them quite as many opportunities to show off their offense. But they were a hell of a team in this period, and Haku and Barbarian were always believable asskickers.
  11. Childs
    I have found the Hogan/Slaughter build really unappealing and not even for the obvious reasons of Vince's bad taste. Hogan was just insufferable, and I can't imagine having cheered for him based on these promos. The memorial-wall-in-the-sky shit was just icky and disrespectful to anyone who really lost a family member to war. The God-is-a-Hulkamaniac stuff sucked as well, though as someone who has covered Ray Lewis, I'm more used to that line of thinking.
  12. Childs
    I can see both sides of this issue. Jumbo wasn't lazy and gave a reasonable performance as the ace against a guy who wasn't familiar or particularly over to the fanbase. But he did treat Foley as a person of little consequence, and I see how that might've stung a little given Mick's crazy effort to put on a show. It's not a match that diminishes Jumbo at all in my eyes, but I understand why it might've diminished him in Foley's eyes.
  13. Childs
    The cool thing about these six-mans is that they often managed to shift the focus to a different match-up without losing the overall intensity. As Loss mentioned, this one put the spotlight on Misawa vs. Taue, given that Kawada was absent. This is probably the least of the six-mans that have appeared on yearbooks since Misawa vs. Jumbo got going, but that's no real criticism.
  14. Childs
    I've read jdw's description of how this became a puro gateway drug for a lot of 90s fans, but as Ditch indicated, that has always seemed like a "had to be there" thing. It wasn't the match of the night, week, month or year. It wasn't the best Steiners match from the time period. It wasn't the best all-action NJ tag match of the period. It wasn't the best Hase or Sasaki performance from the period. Just one of those alchemy things, I guess. It was a fine way to pass 15 minutes, but it wouldn't shock me if I never feel a reason to watch it again.
  15. Childs
    I fall between you guys on this one. There were definitely some awkward moments where they seemed unsure which direction to take the match. But they also delivered some really intense exchanges that redeemed it to some degree. We've talked the idea of the "Flair match" to death on this board. That said, this felt like a stereotypical Flair match -- always something happening, stiff and intense at the right moments, signature spots checked off, more about action and forward propulsion than any real theme. I agree that they could have had a damn good match in the 1980s.
  16. Childs

    Kamala

    Childs replied to Exposer's topic in The Microscope

    What's wrong with the scared animal thing? Many animals are most dangerous when they're scared and cornered. I'm not commenting on the social acceptability of casting a human in that role. I'm just saying it seems logical from a performance standpoint.
  17. Childs
    It's interesting that the numbers were so bad, because it's not like the product was uniformly shitty. The yearbooks have certainly reiterated that WCW ran plenty of good TV matches and strong PPVs from 1990-94. I guess it shows how unimportant that is when the really big picture stuff isn't clicking.
  18. Childs

    Current WWE

    Childs replied to Smack2k's topic in WWE

    Gold! Khawk, can you just post in every thread so I can see the cats and dogs more often.
  19. Childs
    This featured some of the best execution of a rivals-turned-partners team that I've seen. Just more good stuff from USWA, with all of their big feuds now at a point where I'm eager to see more.
  20. Childs
    There's definitely some black comedy in the idea of Hogan as the ultimate American. He in no way represented the phony ideals he was touting, yet he absolutely represented a lot of what a cynic would describe as "Real American." These promos have a place in the Hogan-was-an-asshole thread we had going a while back.
  21. Childs
    The first two falls of this felt like the touring version of Santo vs. Casas -- graceful, athletic but lacking in passion. Business picked up a bit in the third fall with some nifty battles over submissions. I thought Santito went out a bit quickly to the sharpshooter. Overall, easy to watch but unmemorable.
  22. Childs
    This was a hell of a match and another notch in Jarrett's case as one of the best wrestlers in the U.S. Pritchard was terrific as well. Even the simplest stuff seemed tightly worked, and they did a great job with the finishing stretch. Strictly in terms of matches, 1991 USWA has outpaced 1990 USWA.
  23. Childs
    I can't say enough about the virtue of simplicity in these early Onita matches. Here, he came out on fire, took a huge beating from Goto in return and, after a few nasty cutoffs, staged a spirited, to-the-point rally. These weren't really death matches, just brutal, straight-up battles that played to Onita's penchants for selling, eating punishment and connecting to the crowd. And I still think Goto was his best opponent. They had great timing together, and Goto came off as a tough motherfucker. As great as '91 has been so far, this is near the top of my MOTY list.
  24. Childs
    I'll second the 8/30/95 Kansai match.
  25. Childs
    I have a good 12-disc Luger comp from a guy who used to trade as BNewt. Starts with some Florida stuff and runs through the Superbrawl match with Sting in '92.
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