Childs
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LeBron James gave Flair a shoutout as a godfather of "swag" after Flair attended the Heat-Bobcats game Wednesday.
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Now those are two guys I don't link in my mind, even though I like them both.
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1. El Dandy - I have loved him ever since Will's set came out however many years ago. But I've been going through the 1990 yearbook, which features an absolute prime Dandy. And I look forward to every match that pops up, singles, tag or trios. I don't know that I've ever seen a guy move more fluidly between all types of wrestling -- from matwork to brawling to flying to comedy. 2. Bobby Eaton - Another 1990 yearbook choice. He started the year with a rare but awesome singles performance against Flair. And he's been the best performer on the best tag team in the world as the MX close out their run with a superb string of matches. 3. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi - As I watch the '90s generation of All-Japan take center stage, no one puts a bigger grin on my face. Kikuchi vs. Jumbo is one of my favorite six-man pairings of all-time, and he was also sensational in his 7/12/90 singles challenge against Fuchi. 4. Ikeda vs. Ishikawa - A bit of a cheat here, but a couple months back, I decided to watch every match-up between them that I have on tape (singles, tag and multi-man). And boy did that make for a fun couple of weeks of late-night viewing. I've had this conversation with Phil before, but I wish these guys lived in the U.S. and spoke English, because I'd love to write a profile about them as two guys wedded throughout their adult lives by low-rent violence. Are they like the kind of brothers who only see each other a few times a year but share a connection that can't be understood by anyone else? I want to know. 5. Riki Choshu - Because as a rule, I'm always going to enjoy a match with Choshu more than I would've enjoyed it without him.
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Abby was better because there was no double cross to his act. He presented himself as a lunatic fat guy who was turned on by violence and would cut your ass up with a fork. And that's exactly what he delivered night after night for decades. Brody's act, by contrast, was a total gyp, as others have described in the thread.
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I liked that Kingston main event, but these posts remind me that I hate Chikara more than maybe any wrestling ever. The one Chikara show I attended -- believe it was night two of KOT in 2008 -- featured a legitimately great main event with Danielson on one side and Johnny Saint on the other. But I just loathed the hyper-self-aware, jokey shit and the way the fan base lapped it up. When Phil, Tom and I drove up to Philly, we thought we might attend both Saturday and Sunday's shows. By the end of Saturday, despite buzzing from the aforementioned main event, we had zero desire to return. Paraphrasing Tom: I don't want to be winked at constantly when I'm watching pro wrestling.
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New Japan. Great depth and variety, and the idea that "shitty" Koshinaka matches made up any significant percentage of it is just silly. All Japan might have had more matches that I'd call great, but it also presented fewer surprises or discoveries. Memphis was my favorite of the American sets -- best high-end matches, best lead guy in Lawler and plenty of surprises. Texas was my least favorite set so far -- plenty of good stuff but not a whole lot that would contend for my top 20 lists on the other sets.
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Sawyer's not really a revelation at this point. He was a tremendous talent who had significant '80s runs in Georgia and Mid-South along with some good matches in New Japan. -
Based on yearbook watching, I'd say 1990 was the last year Flair was a top 10 guy in the world. I don't think he was the best that year. He wasn't as good as Dandy or Satanico, and I'm not even sure I'd put him above Bobby Eaton if we keep it to WCW. But he was still awfully good, at least until he dropped the belt to Sting. In general, I really appreciate the thinking behind this thread. Way too often, we hear that so and so was great for 20 years without any attempt to assess the individual years. The yearbooks and 80s projects have been revelatory in showing that even the best of the best had peaks and valleys.
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Was it ever clear to you why Dave and others thought Brody was better than Hansen, John? I came to the matches years later, but for the life of me, I can't see how anyone would come away with that view. It's not like Hansen's character was fucking subtle or something.
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Haven't we already fleshed out Jerry's bizarre inability to see Tenryu's charisma? What's the point of even arguing with someone who hasn't seen any of Tenryu in the '90s or '00s? On Jumbo, there's nothing to be said about Dylan's position. He's seen a ton of him, understands that he's good and doesn't find him appealing. It is what it is.
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Muraco is a good one -- just a real sack of shit who is for some reason beloved in certain corners. The Dick Murdoch thread reminded me of my dislike for Adrian Adonis. Adonis had a lot of talent, and I like his stuff against Buddy Rose. But I found him almost universally disappointing in New Japan, and though he was fine on the AWA set, he didn't stand out there either. I hate Manami Toyota. She could be phenomenal for five minutes at a time but on the whole, represents everything that bugs me about Joshi -- from the screaming to the racing through every damned spot. I know this is completely non-controversial in these parts, but Brody might be the all-time "fuck that guy" worker. It absolutely boggles my mind that anyone ever thought he was better than Hansen.
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There was a lot of good wrestling in this, highlighting the contrast between Owen's athletic style and Finlay's rough-and-tumble brawling. But that made it all the more frustrating that it never went anywhere as a match. No build, no highlight moments, no real conclusion, nothing.
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These guys are always a pleasure. They worked complicated sequences so smoothly and quickly that it's like watching bugs dance on the surface of a lake or something. This was another trios where most of the competition came in the first fall, and the last two kind of whizzed by. But that dive train interruptus was so cool that I hardly cared. Dandy's no hands tope over the top rope always looked amazing, and I loved the way Azteca's receipt dive hit him almost as soon as he turned around. I could watch this crew every week.
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They certainly kept it simple, as Loss indicated, but this was my kind of thing. Vader did eight minutes of Vader stuff. Then Choshu staged a stirring rally capped by an awesome series of lariats. And bang, title change. I've seen them have a better body of a match with a worse finish. But I'll never complain about these guys working a hard-hitting 10-12 minutes without any bullshit.
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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.