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Childs

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Everything posted by Childs

  1. Childs
    More blood from this show. I'm not entirely up on 1990 NJ booking, so I don't know what turned these BFFs against one another. But Hamaguchi jumped Choshu in the aisle, and Choshu bled heavily before he ever reached the ring. They went for a really simple structure. Hamaguchi, as the underdog, poured on everything he could to capitalize on his ambush. But he couldn't put Choshu away and eventually, Choshu just obliterated him with lariats, seeming to work past a throwing in of the towel from Hamaguchi's corner. There was a greater factional angle at play, but again, I don't know the specifics. It was certainly a fun match, with the former partners going to war and bleeding a bunch.
  2. Childs
    The first two rounds consisted mostly of unremarkable grappling. But Aoyagi ripped at Liger's mask in the second, which seemingly planted the seed for the match to become something else entirely. Liger pulled off his mask completely before the third round and just tore into Aoyagi with a vengeance the rest of the way. It was odd in that the reaction seemed delayed and out of scale with anything Aoyagi had done. But I will say the match got a lot more interesting after raving lunatic Keiichi Yamada emerged. I'm not sure how I'd rate this overall. I was glad it made the yearbook.
  3. Childs
    My general experience watching All-Japan for the yearbooks has been that the matches are as good as or even better than I recalled based on past viewings. That was not the case here. My thoughts lined up closely to what Ditch said. They did a great job establishing their stylistic differences at the beginning, and the finish was a great moment. But the body of the match meandered quite a bit and certainly lacked the intensity we saw from both guys in the 5/26 six-man. It's still a great match and seminal moment in the history of the promotion. But just based on the wrestling, I don't think it's a top-50 All-Japan match from the decade.
  4. Childs
    Did you guys edit this down to the finish? I can't remember if there's a full version out there, but it was hard to tell how good it was from the clip here. Gordy did seem to show more intensity in dropping the belt than he had in winning it.
  5. Childs
    The essential thing Stan Hansen understood was that a brawl should be a claustrophobic affair. It isn't about wandering through the crowd or staging elaborate ways to put a guy through a table. It's about getting right up on the dude you hate and firing elbows, knees, forearms, whatever through any opening he gives you. To his credit, Doc, who didn't necessarily wrestle that way most of the time, bought right into it here. So they had a great brawl! Actually, Doc kicked Stan's ass a lot of the way, which brought Hansen's excellent selling into play. Stan also took a pretty wild bump to the outside off his missed lariat. Then we got a great flash lariat finish, with Stan slipping out of Doc's finisher and Doc taking a nifty bump to put over the impact. I loved this when I first saw it on a Schneider comp and loved it still this time around.
  6. Childs
    I know it's semi-blasphemous to criticize Terry Gordy, but he rarely strikes me as a great singles wrestler. I wouldn't say he did anything wrong here. His lariats and power moves looked perfectly credible as he went toe-to-toe against Jumbo. He just didn't do anything to put a real stamp on what was supposed to be a huge win for him. I think that came across in the reaction from the Chiba crowd, which seemed thrown off when he put Jumbo away. Some of the blame goes to Jumbo as well. He didn't show any great desperation to hold onto his belt. A Triple Crown change should at least be match of the night, but I thought Doc-Hansen was easily better than this.
  7. Childs
    They executed a pleasing build from flashy exhibition in the first fall to something far grittier and meaner by the third fall. I appreciated their discipline in having the tecnicos dominate while the action was loose and stylish and the rudos dominate when things turned ugly. The cool stuff looked really cool. The nasty stuff -- like the rudos crotching Santo on the post and Casas repeatedly kicking Super Astro in the belly -- looked nasty. So yeah, this was pretty darn satisfying overall, my favorite match to date from Hamada's UWF.
  8. Childs
    And as in the baseball debates, cold logic helps you realize flaws in your gauzy memories. I'm the right age to be sentimental about Sting, but I find that I'm not. He was never the face of classic WCW for me; that was Flair. And he wasn't the face of later, boom-period WCW; that was Hogan. He was certainly one of the most important figures in WCW for a decade, but I wouldn't be in a rush to stick a guy who was never an ace and never a historically great worker into the HOF.
  9. Childs
    This was absolutely tremendous. If you're not a huge fan of matwork, you probably won't agree with Loss' GOAT talk. But I am, so I see where he's coming from. It's incredibly difficult to do this kind of match well, to maintain the attention to detail in each fight for a hold, to keep finding interesting variations on counters and submissions 20 minutes into a mat-based war. These guys did it at a level that you're not going to see more than a few times a decade. The first fall alone could have been a MOTYC with all of the intricate submission stuff and Dandy's little hints of unleashing something more violent. This was a title match, not a stip match, so the violence never really exploded. But Dandy's selling and the rush of late highspots created plenty of drama in the closing minutes. This was a classic, plain and simple, and is a new desert island match for me.
  10. Childs
    Agree completely. I remembered FLIK's description and hoped to see a total war. But this was more just a stiff, well-executed match without a ton of hatred or crowd heat. It was good, just not something I'll remember.
  11. Childs
    I agree with Loss' praise for Choshu-Muto but did not see this as an inferior match. Where the Muto match was about power vs. mobility, this was more a straight-up heavyweight slugfest, which suited me fine. I particularly liked their nasty exchange of headbutts. The flash ending was well-executed, with Hash selling that he was pretty fucked up and trying a last, desperate counter before Choshu could hit another lariat. It wasn't their best match, but this is a pairing I can happily watch over and over.
  12. Childs
    It's pretty widely heralded as the first great match of the Jumbo-Misawa feud. There are just sooo many great six-mans from said feud.
  13. Childs
    Question for you, John. Was it well known to fans at the time that Tenryu was jumping to start a new promotion? Would it have been covered in the Japanese papers and such?
  14. Childs
    What about Inoki?
  15. Childs
    I've always thought that: 1) This match was incredibly boring. 2) The unmasking of Misawa came off as the most arbitrary moment imaginable. 3) Fuyuki got fat again in a hurry. Rewatching it in the context of the yearbook did nothing to change these views.
  16. Childs
    But was it as good as Abby vs. Wajima, Eric?
  17. Childs
    Another excellent trios with everyone in it looking good and the action flowing from beginning to end. Some of the Dandy-Atlantis exchanges were incredibly athletic, and the Satanico-Cruz stuff moved with a beautiful fluidity. I hope EMLL keeps its momentum, because all of these are real treats.
  18. Childs
    This was indeed the Satanico show. I loved his exchanges with MS-1, and like Dandy, he was so good at transitioning effortlessly between brawling and technical work. Those guys were probably the two best luchadores in the world at this point, and I think this yearbook will capture their greatness better than any other.
  19. Childs
    I remember their Nov. match being a good bit better. Guess we'll find out.
  20. Childs
    This was tremendous, a 10-minute distillation of everything that's great about the rivalry. Tim already mentioned Eaton's offense and boy was it great here. I'm not sure I've ever seen that slingshot backbreaker. It's a testament to Eaton that he still bothered to come up with interesting new stuff this deep into his career. As stated in the thread for the Flair match, he had all the tools for a strong singles run. And I still popped huge for the Patrick spot, even though I had read this thread and knew something was coming from him. I could have done without the Freebirds ending, but this was still among the most enjoyable matches of the year to date. WCW continues to own 1990.
  21. Childs
    This was great while it lasted. Sorry to be contrarian, but the one thing I really didn't like was the rapidfire sequence of hammerlock reversals. They came so easily that it struck me as kind of silly, like something from an indy mirror exchange in 2008. Anyway, Santana's legwork was great, and I dug the viciousness of Henning's strikes. That's the guy I love from Portland and AWA instead of the Henning who built most of his WWF run around overly theatrical bumping. I was just bummed when this ended. Given 20 minutes, these guys might have delivered a MOTYC.
  22. Childs
    It wasn't much fun to revisit this in the wake of the '80s set, which showed the Jumbo-Tenryu rivalry in all its glory. It's not a bad match. Tenryu got to hit his flash power bomb early, and they did a few nice counter sequences down the stretch. But yeah, Tenryu never felt like anything but a spent force, which is crazy considering the TC match they had 10 months earlier or even the 12/6/89 tag match. I get why Baba booked it that way; it's just a bummer to watch.
  23. Childs
    Best match on the show, thought it wasn't as dramatic as the Fujiwara-Yamazaki matches from the 80s Other Japan set. The matwork here came off as really hard-fought, which isn't surprising for a Fujiwara match but distinguished it from the other 4/15 stuff. They also staged the knockout quite well.
  24. Childs
    I've always liked Anjo, and he brought the energy I expected to this. I loved all of his knees to the body early and his desperate open-handed combinations as he tried to stage rallies later in the match. Takada also gave a solid performance. He landed some sharp counter kicks, and I liked the way he kept turning the momentum with suplexes when the smaller Anjo tried to fight inside for too long. I've realized that a lot of my irritation at Takada comes back to his leglock. I can't fathom why no one ever insisted that he torque on it a little more or work the heel and toes or I don't know, something. He should've taken leglock lessons from Fujiwara. Anyway, he did the lame-ass leglock here, but it wasn't such a momentum killer, because Anjo did a nice job of working to reverse out of it. These guys were both better standing and trading, so the ending probably would've been hotter if they had done that instead of finishing on the mat. But it was a good match, less lethargic than I expected based on Phil's description.
  25. Childs
    I had no problem with Maeda's performance. Wouldn't you expect him to think he was above Nakano? Granted, he was no Tenryu when it came to being a dismissive prick and selling a little at the same time. But I thought he played a fine ace, and his flurries of kicks came off as pretty vicious. Nakano also did well with his more glamorous role of doomed, feisty underdog. I agree with Pete; I'm good with this kind of match, where the energy is there for the upset attempt even though it's never treated as a conceivable reality.
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