Childs
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Really well-executed match, no surprise there. But it left me a little cold compared to my favorite juniors matches of the year, which would probably be Liger-Sano and Fuchi-Kikuchi. There wasn't a great sense of fight to it. As great as these guys were and as many good matches as they had together, I'm not sure they ever pulled off a "Holy shit, that was amazing!" match.
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"He's ambitiously stupid" - Why Scott Keith's new book is scary bad
Childs replied to Bix's topic in Megathread archive
Yeah, Hansen's my guy, and I'd say he was pretty brilliant at maintaining a core character but adapting it to fit various opponents and settings. For example, his matches against Inoki were pretty different than his matches against Baba a couple years later. His great 1983 brawl against Funk was a hell of a lot different, in the ultimate effect it created, than his 1993 stuff against Kobashi and Kawada. Most would think of him as primarily an offensive wrestler, but he was good enough to build a match around selling, as he did in the '94 carny against Taue. He evolved in the sense that he wasn't doing topes and power bombs in 1981. But I don't think anyone would say 1993 Stan Hansen was a fundamentally different performer than the guy in those Inoki matches. So yeah, I basically love his act and appreciate that it was so durable and that he cared enough to tweak it over the years. You could say a lot of the same things about Flair, though Ric did less to keep up with state-of-the-art offense. -
Things guys that you like do that you hate
Childs replied to JerryvonKramer's topic in Pro Wrestling
It's just nonsense to say all of his WWE work is built around that spot. His selling, bumping and teasing of comebacks -- all top-notch -- aren't built around it. His finishing runs are often built around setting it up, but isn't that what you're supposed to do with a finisher? -
Some of the points in NintendoLogic's post strike me as criticism of a style of work more than of Murdoch. I'd say he was excellent at working holds to pass the time in long matches, which was what you did as a top-of-the-card worker when he came up. But if you can't abide limb work that leads to no specific payoff, well, something like the Reed match is always going to be a chore. I agree with Dylan on the Adonis/Murdoch tags -- said it during the nominating process for the NJ set, never changed my mind. But I really enjoyed Murdoch in the multi-man matches on that set, especially the trios tournament at the end of 1988. He was always coming up with nifty rope spots to tease eliminations and other little creative touches. The Mid-South and NJ sets capture most of what's good about him, so if you don't like his stuff from either, you're unlikely to be converted. My favorite part of Murdoch is his athleticism. You expect a pot-bellied guy named Capt. Redneck to throw great punches, and he did. But you don't expect him to spring up for some of the world's greatest leapfrogs. I've said this elsewhere, but he's like the middle-aged guy in your rec league, who played minor league baseball before he let his body go and is still ridiculously more coordinated than everyone else.
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Things guys that you like do that you hate
Childs replied to JerryvonKramer's topic in Pro Wrestling
I always thought Misawa treated the TD91 sort of like a nuclear bomb -- such a deranged thing to do to someone that he only pulled it out in the most dire circumstances. -
Terry is not a contender for my No. 1 overall spot, in part because I sometimes get tired of his cartoonish side. But I give him tremendous credit for fully animating so many different roles. He wrestled like a classic NWA champ in the Jumbo match. Then, four years later, he was a compelling loon in the empty arena match against Lawler. Then, two years after that, he was the greatest babyface in Japan. Then, six years after that, he had the unbelievably intense match with Flair at the '89 Bash, where he played a hybrid of lunatic and serious threat. And then he had a whole other career in the '90s as indy wrestling's favorite crazy uncle (a hit-and-miss period, but there were certainly some highlights.) It reminds me of something Bill James said about Rickey Henderson: "You could cut his career in half, and you'd have two Hall-of-Famers." The unifying theme is that he found some way to put his stamp on almost everything he was ever in. If you bought a ticket to see Terry Funk, he was going to do something to send you home with a memory.
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Interesting. I don't think most people would guess that.
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Bigger than Hogan vs. Warrior?
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Lawler and Jarrett were great in this. I expect it from Lawler, but Jarrett as a fiery young babyface has really impressed me. There's such a difference between what he brought to the table here and his Double J stuff five years later. I loved Lawler going to the hidden chains as a face move. This feud has been fun.
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I dug this as well. Goto is probably my favorite FMW guy, because he always came off as a guy who could straight up kick your ass, barbed wire or no. And yes, Onita was one of the great facial performers in the history of wrestling. The explosion spots seemed a little off at times -- like they popped when Onita even rolled near the ropes. But the climactic one, with Goto taking a full-on whip into the barbed wire, worked pretty well. They also kept it nice and tight at just under 12 minutes.
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The caning spots certainly made this memorable. The image of Nakano just standing there, inviting Aja and Bison to hit her in the head with sticks, bordered on sadomasochistic. No doubt it put her over as pretty indestructible. I really didn't like that they built to that sequence, wandered out into the crowd and then came back to do a fairly normal wrestling match. After all that violence, it just kind of ended. I feel like I watch Joshi through some sort of distorted lens. So often, when Loss and FLIK absolutely love a match, I really like parts of it, but the structure lets me down. This had all the parts of something incredible. As presented, however, it didn't get there for me.
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I got bored at times after two straight years of it. There often was a predictable nature of who would get pinned, in the sense of knowing it's just not going to end with this guy in trouble: "We're in deep into the run to the finish, Misawa just tagged in Kikuchi to face a hurt Jumbo which means Kikuchi this will get turned around in a minute or two and Jumbo will pin Kikuchi... hey now, everyone is outside the ring except for Jumbo and Kikuchi... backdrop... that's it." Lots of pro wrestling is predictable, and you kind of go with it. The six-mans and other non-big tags month after month did. There were times when they changed things up in 1992, or there was an extra passion to it, or they surprised you. There were around 20 non-big six-mans and tags between the two sides, and I just can't say that all of them were fresh or compelling. That's from someone who loves the match up, and pretty much anytime I put in one of those matches gets a smile on my face. But I can't sell it as a series where, if you watch every available match in the rivalry between the two side, you're going to find everything awesome, or even solid, and not get a little bored at times. John Watching them on the yearbooks probably eliminates some of that because you're only getting the top-shelf matches, and there's such a variety of stuff in between. It's been a long time since I've watched a whole year of All Japan in a continuous push, but the effect is certainly different.
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Gimmick matches in general tend to suck because they limit what the wrestlers can do and force them into various stock spots. With triple threat matches in particular, there's only two storylines you can really do. 90% of the time, it's "one guy gets taken out, the other two fight, the third guy comes back right when one of them gains the advantage, repeat until it's time to take it home." The other one is one guy getting double-teamed the whole match. There's also the more indy approach of trying to come up with "creative" three-man spots, which look contrived and awful 95 percent of the time.
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I've seen most of the Jumbo-Misawa six-man tags multiple times, and I've never gotten bored with them. Actually, as a group, I might find them more rewatchable than any other "class" of All-Japan matches. They were so good at shifting the focus among various match-ups while always cutting a hell of a pace.
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Another great six-man as the Misawa-Jumbo feud revved up. I like Kikuchi as much as or more than Kobashi in these. He could make anybody look like a killer with the way he ate offense, and he and Jumbo made one of the great big man vs. little man match-ups in wrestling. The Misawa- Jumbo interactions were pretty fierce too as they tuned up for their singles rematch. Misawa hit Jumbo with a slap from hell at one point to get him off Kikuchi. And they had a great ground-and-pound exchange. This one truly doesn't get a huge amount of hype among amid all the great Misawa-Jumbo six-mans, though it did get 4-1/2 stars from Meltzer. It's a testament to the depth of the series that something this good was "just another match."
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Things have gotten really sad on that WC thread, with one guy arguing that Sting should get major credit for the "buzz" generated by a theoretical match with the Undertaker at Wrestlemania.
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I actually liked their Superstars match better. It felt a little grittier, with nastier offense from Henning. This was more what I expect from WWF Mr. Perfect, a lot of movement and flashy bumps. Still an enjoyable, fast-paced match with a few very cool spots at the end. Based on what we've seen, I'm convinced these guys had a truly great match in them. I would love to have watched Tito challenge the AWA version of heel Henning.
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No, Liger/Sano from the UWFI feud wasn't like this. I haven't watched it in a few years but recall it being fairly subdued, actually.
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I really disagree about the '92 matches. I thought the 3/4/92 TC match was excellent when I watched it on the yearbook and found the carny final solid as well. I wasn't the only one to praise the 3/4 match in that context. As for this match, it was hard to tell how good it was based on the clip. But I will say that Hansen didn't seem ready to treat Misawa as a serious threat. It's weird to watch Misawa work without the elbows as his touchstone weapon.
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I loved the way Toyota opened this match -- maybe the best three minutes I've ever seen her produce. That dive into the stands was such a badass way to put over the recklessness of her attack. I had some quibbles with what followed structurally. Hotta's long run of offense felt really long, without a lot of teased comebacks from Toyota. And when Toyota finally did turn the tide, she instantly seemed as fresh as she had to start the match. There were also some moments of really dodgy execution to go along with the cool stuff Loss mentioned, like that Hotta Boston Crab. I don't want to criticize too much, though, because they did achieve the war-of-attrition feel by the late stages. As usual, I can't see a MOTYC in Joshi, but it was good.
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This felt like a really good match filled with great wrestling, if that makes any sense. They didn't seem to be striving for an epic battle. In fact, the last two falls passed briskly without much sense of struggle over the finishes. But there was so much talent in the ring that everything looked fantastic. And Dandy and Satanico were such compelling, expressive performers. They didn't have to shoot for the stars to come close to reaching them.
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Kikuchi was also a guy who was going to get himself over if put in any kind of featured spot. He was such an expressive worker.
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Yeah, that was his peak year, and you could argue that between his offensive efficiency and his strong defense, he was a top-5 player in the league. But in addition to Bird and Magic on the rise, you had Moses Malone at the height of his powers, Kareem and Dr. J stil playing at an elite level, and a bunch of great scorers like Gervin, Dantley, Alex English and Bernard King. Then Isiah jumped up, and by 1984-85, you had Jordan. So if Moncrief had a window as a cream-of-the-crop star, it closed quickly.
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In the realm of sports-related statements inspired by the HOF defense of Sting, I was actually more bothered by the dude who claimed Sidney Moncrief was once the third-best player in the NBA.