Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

Childs

Moderators
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    5001

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Childs

  1. Childs
    I had a similar reaction to Pete in that my attention drifted during the outside brawling section, which featured a lot of wandering around and weak weapon shots. I did like Kyoko's energy during the first half of the match. The in-ring climax was a lot more focused, but the execution was sloppy, with Kyoko the main culprit. Maybe Chad didn't notice any big botches because she botched basically everything. The haircutting was really the best part of the whole scene.
  2. Childs
    I don't know if Hokuto was legit hurt (probably was) but that cast was an amazing prop. The rigidity of it suggested a broken arm or a dislocated elbow, and then she did a great job of working the match as if she was badly fucked up (which she might well have been.) And yes, Toyota kept her performance amazingly focused. I didn't find this quite as exciting as the Hokuto/Nakano match, but if you want a focused narrative, this is your ticket. Either way, 1991 Joshi has been a pleasant surprise.
  3. Childs
    Will, given the speed of Matt's response, I think he's eager to blow up your head. That's how they deal with Demoliton doubters around his parts.
  4. Childs
    Owen was a great talent who didn't have that deep yearning to be an all-time great. That's not a knock on him. Actually, it means he was more sane than most guys on his level, including Bret.
  5. Childs
    This was a level down from their best matches on the '80s set but still plenty good. I agree that Vader was the guy who made it go, from the early asskicking he delivered to the blood. Fujinami at least delivered the requisite fire in going after Vader's cut. These guys had really good long-term chemistry, delivering strong matches when Vader was still quite green and after Fujinami had begun his fade.
  6. Childs
    As someone who watched every bit of AJPW that made tape from the 1980s, I can attest that Tiger Jeet Singh is a great pick.
  7. Childs
    I haven't really gotten into these Pillman/Rogers matches. I respect the effort, but there's something about Rogers that doesn't quite connect with me. I get that he's playing a moron. Yet I still cringe every time he does the fucking airplane spin. They handled the stip oddly, with Pillman going for a bunch of pins in the opening five minutes. I get doing it once to make it seem like he was thrown off, but again and again? And why did the ref just count them instead of making a show of not counting them? The whole thing just felt off despite some cool stuff from Pillman that got the crowd going.
  8. Childs
    Funk threw great punches against everybody, but he seemed to take them to another level against Lawler. Maybe I just prefer his offense in psycho mode to his babyface offense. This felt like 2/3 of a match, which is the only reason I'd put it below their 1981 outing in Memphis. But it was a great scene.
  9. Childs
    These guys were gold together, and this was their best match yet. I think Memphis babyface Jarrett is easily my favorite version -- just a perfect blend of fire, athleticism and grasp of structure. Gilbert was also at his absolute peak. Loss put it well in a previous thread when he said 1990-91 Eddie was out-Lawlering Lawler. Like everyone else, I loved the stuff with the boot laces.
  10. Childs
    It made sense to me that Hokuto would try a fast opening against Nakano. I really liked the way this built, with Nakano's sheer force pitted against Hokuto's resilience and resourcefulness. Nakano did a lot of impressive things for her size, and that dive to the floor without benefit of a turnbuckle certainly goes on the list. Hokuto was probably the best Joshi worker ever at staging a huge rally, and we got an early glimpse of that here. They walked right up to the line of overkill in the finishing stretch but never jumped across it. I was with Loss in disliking the random interference to set up Bull's second-rope tombstone. At least the ref refused to count the fall. Overall, I liked the match a lot.
  11. Childs
    I loved the opening of this with Kobashi trying to play cat-and-mouse and Hansen dealing with it by just crushing him with a chair. After that, it was a good little match, albeit a minor chapter in their rivalry. I always get the sense that Hansen really respected Kobashi's effort and gave him a lot of offense for that reason.
  12. Childs
    The ring was actually one of my favorite parts of this when I first watched it with Phil -- just disgusting and the perfect setting for a gritty brawl. My reaction to the match was standard -- terrific fight with a cartoonishly bad finish. But I didn't like it quite as much on second viewing, probably because I was comparing it to the great wager matches from the end of 1990.
  13. Childs
    As much as Mr. Perfect was a disappointment compared to Portland and AWA Henning, he was still one of the company's better workers in 1990. And this was probably his best match of the year, given that the Tito match I liked was so short. In both cases, Henning eschewed showy bullshit and sold that he was a guy trying desperately to endure the fury of inspired babyfaces. Really liked Piper here as well. I often find that he's a better brawler in theory than in practice. But in this case, he brought a real fire to everything he did. Definitely on the short list for WWF MOTY.
  14. Childs
    This was just unbelievably bad for the main event of the year's biggest PPV. I mean, you have to give Ole credit for devising an angle that bored the crowd, cut the balls off the babyface champion and restricted the company's best big-event worker into a cardboard performer. On the other hand, I like all the fantasy booking scenarios in this thread.
  15. Childs
    I don't know why people were always so meh about this series. Hansen brought out a whole different side of Luger, who never looked like much of a brawler against anyone else. I loved the way Lex adapted with stuff like the headbutts and the desperate kicks from his back. Also a really good screwy finish, with both guys essentially getting to win the match in ways that reinforced their personae. Luger teased the possibility of more Hansen matches in his post-victory interview, and I wish they had happened.
  16. Childs
    This didn't need any more time. They delivered a whole match worth of action and did a great job building to the big moments. Honestly, would this match be as remembered if it went 18 minutes with a standard peril section and hot tag? Also, no way this would have been as good if you subbed Flair in for Windham.
  17. Childs
    Great format for Joshi, because it emphasized pace without the need for long-term selling. I'm with everyone else in that I loved Moreno and found Madusa shockingly entertaining. But I even liked Toyota in this context. Structurally, they did a great job with Aja as the force who could not be balanced. They held her in reserve for most of the early going and then delivered all the "planes circling Kong" spots you'd want as a kind of sugar rush climax.
  18. Childs
    I think this was the first Joshi match I ever saw, and I had no idea what to make of these painted behemoths lashing each other with weapons. At this point, I'd rather watch it than the vast majority of pimped Joshi. Nakano made great use of the cage to showcase her athleticism and not just on the iconic leg drop. I also dug Aja focusing her weapon shots on Nakano's legs, trying to make the climb to victory more difficult. Nakano could have sold that storyline better. In the end, it's hard to rub me wrong with a spectacle match between bomb-throwing heavyweights. And they gave me plenty of spectacle and plenty of bombs with the added drama of ace vs. up-and-comer.
  19. Childs
    This was different from anything else on the yearbook. One of the cool things about 1990 Waltman is that the promotion trusted him to go all the way with some match concepts that might have seemed out there for your average rookie. In this case, he endured a hellish stretching/beating from an accomplished shoot stylist and just made it look like death. Waltman not only kept up with Wilkins technically, he showed a command of teasing and pacing that you wouldn't expect from an inexperienced worker. He was so good that he easily made himself a babyface for the night. Total prodigy stuff.
  20. Childs
    This was awesome. The flip side of the footage shortage in lucha is that you get wonderful surprises from guys like El Faraon, who are little seen but suddenly pop up with brilliant performances. He was terrific in the third fall, unleashing hell on Pirata and hitting one of the greatest topes ever. Pirata is more of a know entity, obviously, but he was tremendous as well, taking some unreal bumps and delivering one of the sickest blade jobs in wrestling history. They did a great job with the narrative tension created by the blood, something that's familiar to boxing fans but doesn't pop up in wrestling all that often. Morgan went from being the clear rudo in the first fall to a sympathetic figure in the third because of his determination to fight through it. Great stuff and probably lucha MOTY in the non-Dandy category.
  21. Childs
    I don't like Mr. Pogo as much as Goto, but I've enjoyed all these early Onita matches. He kept things tight and simple, with the focus very much on his strengths.
  22. Childs
    Great match and culimination of the rise of Misawa/Kawada in 1990. Kawada and Taue served as the workhorses, but Jumbo and Misawa made the match with their attempts to one up each other from the apron. As much as we've praised the young guys for how far they advanced this year, Jumbo also deserves credit for stepping up his game as the guy clinging to the crown. He delivered some awesome moments, both in selling and in cleaning house when he got pissed. I might have to put this one ahead of the 11/1/90 NJPW tag as well, because it delivered just as much action and heat with more character payoff.
  23. Childs
    It was particularly rough to have this follow the heatfest that was the natives tag. Everybody here worked and hit hard, but it's tough to argue that the match built to much. The fans reacted that way as well. They wanted to get into the last five minutes, but they hadn't been taken on the ride. As others have said, these teams traded control too often without developing specific plans of attack. And though the finish was a decent idea for making Doc look good, they executed it terribly. Lots of three-minute stretches of this would look good in isolation, but the result was far less than the sum of the parts.
  24. Childs
    This completely met my expectations, which is really saying something given the years these guys had and the quality of their Oct. match. Each fall was a fucking war, and the stretch of nearfalls at the end was ridiculous. I liked that, even as they beat the piss out of each other, they showed how deep they could dig into their reservoir of wrestling moves. It was a desperate fight but a desperate fight between superior craftsmen. I was interested to see how others reacted to the finish. It was definitely a Sopranos ending in the sense it made you think about the nature of the series more than it delivered easy satisfaction. But I dug it. The morality between these two was never straight black and white. Tough call between this and Dandy/Azteca for MOTY. In the end, I'm a blood-and-guts person, so I'll take this.
  25. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a password protected forum. Enter Password
×
×
  • Create New...