Childs

I felt like I was watching a different match than Loss and FLIK described. I didn't see a slow build at all; seemed like pretty typical Joshi, with them racing through most of the spots. That's not to say it was a bad match. The sleeper stuff was cool, and they didn't go into finisher/kickout overkill. I just never got the war of attrition feel.

I hadn't watched this in a long time but also liked it better than most of you guys. There's no question they took it out too slow with some less-than-urgent matwork. But I liked the way Williams sold his knee for the last 2/3 of the match; he was so great at portraying debilitated yet dangerous. Kawada also did a nice job of putting over the threat of Doc's flurries. I loved the way he clutched the ropes after eating three straight power moves; showing the fans that if he took the backdrop driver at that point, he was toast. I liked that they didn't go back to the well of Kawada needing three power bombs to win a big match. Instead, they concocted that nifty finishing sequence with Doc blocking some of his signature kicks and Kawada finding new ways to land the knockout blow. I get the criticism of the match -- the need for editing, the failure to hit the peak they did in April. But I still thought the logic was sound and the performances down the stretch were excellent. Calling it a clusterfuck seems a bit much.

Well, they're a strange comparison in a lot of ways because their career arcs were so different. I'm not sure everyone realizes this, but Tenryu was actually a year older than Jumbo. Jumbo was a prodigy who was cut off abruptly by illness when he was 41 and still one of the best workers in the world. Tenryu really didn't get good until he was 35 and didn't reach greatness until he was almost 40. But he was still producing MOTYCs throughout the 1990s and well into the 2000s. If you don't connect with the Tenryu of 1989, I'm not sure you'll ever connect with him fully. He was rarely fiery in the same way as Jumbo, who adopted a more American approach to showing passion. Tenryu was more given to subtle expressions of disdain and perfectly timed bits of in-ring nastiness. He was particularly good as a surly legend dealing with fiery young opponents, and there's no one I'd rather watch in an inter-promotional match. He was also a great seller, adept at making lower-ranked opponents look good while maintaining the overall sense of hierarchy. You could say a lot of the same things about early-1990s Jumbo, and there's no question that Jumbo had more physical talent and was better move-for-move. I don't fault anyone who thinks Jumbo was clearly better; in a lot of ways, he was. But post-1988 Tenryu consistently took matches to a place where the violence was a little uncomfortable and the suspension of disbelief was pretty complete. He was a badass who felt like he walked into the arena off the set of a western or a samurai movie. I pop for his best stuff like I pop for few things in wrestling history.

I thought about listing Tully/Magnum, Jerry, but I decided I needed only one Tully match for the desert island, and I enjoy the Garvin match a little more, especially because it evokes my childhood love of televised NWA wrestling.

This is my desert island list, meaning the list I'd take to be entertained for an indefinite amount of time, not the list I'd necessarily recommend for a newbie or a list of the best matches I've ever seen. It's more like 60 than 50. Baba vs. Billy Robinson 7/24/76 Johnny Saint vs. Steve Grey 1/28/80 Buddy Rose vs. Rick Martel 4/26/80 Andre vs. Hansen 9/23/81 Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantell 3/29/82 Andre vs. Killer Khan 4/1/82 Nick Bockwinkel vs. Jerry Lawler 10/18/82 Choshu vs. Fujinami 4/3/83 Hansen vs. Funk 4/14/83 New Japan Gauntlet 4/19/84 Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Kerry Von Erich 5/22/84 Nick Bockwinkel vs. Rick Martel 9/20/84 Greg Valentine vs. Tito Santana 1/21/85 Fujiwara vs. Super Tiger 9/11/85 Lawler vs. Dundee 12/30/85 Maeda vs. Fujiwara 1/10/86 NJ 5-on-5 3/26/86 Tully Blanchard vs. Ron Garvin 5/3/86 Flair vs. Ricky Morton 7/5/86 Santo vs. Espanto mask vs. mask 8/31/86 Flair vs. Windham 1/24/87 Jumbo/Tenryu vs. Choshu/Yatsu 2/5/87 Savage vs. Steamboat 2/15/87 Fujiwara vs. Choshu 6/9/87 Fujiwara vs. Yamazaki 7/24/89 Jushin Liger vs. Naoki Sano 8/10/89 Jumbo/Yatsu vs. Hansen/Tenryu 12/6/89 Jushin Liger vs. Naoki Sano 1/31/90 Kawada vs. Taue 1/15/91 Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs. Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi 4/20/91 Sano vs. Shamrock 5/19/91 Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs. Misawa/Kawada/Kikuchi 10/15/91 El Dandy vs. Negro Casas 7/3/92 Hansen vs. Kawada 2/28/93 Choshu/Hashimoto vs. Tenryu/Ishikawa 4/2/93 Tenryu vs. Hashimoto 6/17/93 Hansen vs. Kobashi 7/29/93 Tenryu vs. Hashimoto 8/8/93 Naoki Sano vs, Yoji Anjo 8/13/93 Tenryu vs. Hashimoto 2/17/94 Doc vs. Misawa 7/28/94 Vader vs. Takada 8/18/94 Vader vs. Dustin 11/16/94 Misawa vs. Taue 4/15/95 Miswa/Kobashi vs. Kawada/Taue 6/9/95 Finlay vs. Regal 3/24/96 Tenryu vs. Takada 12/13/96 M-Pro 10-man 12/16/96 Han vs. Tamura 1/22/97 Rey Mysterio vs. Eddy Guerrero 10/26/97 Ikeda vs. Otsuka 11/5/97 Ikeda vs. Ishikawa 5/27/98 Ishikawa vs. Ikeda 8/29/99 Regal vs. Benoit 5/25/00 Kawada vs. Sasaki 10/9/00 Liger/Inoue vs. Kikuchi/Kanemaru 2/7/02 Danielson vs. Low-Ki 6/7/02 Liger/Tanaka vs. Kikuchi/Kanemaru 8/29/02 Eddie Guerrero vs. Brock Lesnar 2/15/04 Hashimoto vs. Kawada 2/22/04 Ishikawa vs. Ikeda 4/24/05 Samoa Joe vs. Necro Butcher 6/11/05 Rey Mysterio vs. Eddie Guerrero 6/23/05 Nigel vs. Danielson 6/23/07 Danielson vs. Morishima 8/25/07 BattlArts six-man 7/26/08 Danielson/Claudio vs. Jigsaw/Quackenbush 9/13/09 Mysterio vs. Punk 2/12/10 Hashi/Mashimo vs. Ikeda/Oba 10/24/10 Brock vs. Cena 4/29/12

Also, the Sano-Shamrock from PWFG 5/19/91.

Don't know that I've seen these in another post, so I'll toss recommendations to Jumbo/Misawa and Gordy/Williams vs. Hansen/Spivey from 4/18/91.

He often gets called out for it, and people love him anyway.

I'd add the 8/8/98 Hash vs. Tenryu even though it's a lesser match than 8/1/98 G1 match.

Did you guys catch that piece on the site today advocating for Edge's induction? If I'm Dave, I'm embarrassed to be associated with that kind of dreck.

Got this and read it at the beach last week. It's very well done and something I will refer back to over the years.

God, the similarities between O'Reilly and RE, both in content and style, are eery.

Is Angle even really a great mechanical wrestler? I mean, he's obviously a great athlete or was. But has he ever used his amateur base to do interesting stuff on the mat? Do his strikes look particularly crisp? Does he execute an unusual variety of complicated moves? He has (had?) great stamina and throws a decent looking German suplex (I guess) but I'd like to hear an Angle fan describe his technical calling card. These questions aren't entirely rhetorical; I've probably only watched 5-10 Angle matches from the last five years, so maybe I'm missing something. But I don't think of him as an offensive wrestler on par with Bryan Danielson or Kenta Kobashi or dozens of others.

I was thinking along the same lines, though I'm not sure it's "these days." Judge Landis was one of the main characters in baseball almost 100 years ago and Pete Rozelle was always regarded as a giant in the rise of the NFL. Regardless, the league or commissioner is generally a character in sports, so there's no reason why that shouldn't be the case in wrestling. It's more that WWE rarely does anything interesting with the role.

Dustin vs. Buck blew this away in terms of intensity and setting up swings in momentum. I have to dock them points for working the match they felt like working without any regard for the context of the show. These were guys who prided themselves on their ability to improvise a performance on the fly. But here, it was like they bought into some deep misconception about the importance of their 1989 series. The callback to the chicken-wing finish seemed ridiculous, a little sad even, after 30+ minutes of evidence that the crowd wasn't buying what they were selling. I agree that there was plenty of solid wrestling in the match. But it's hard for me to call a match great when it was so tone-deaf as a performance.

You're probably right about that. I guess my complaint was more about doing a long title match in front of a crowd that was never going to be into it. I went to some of those Center Stage tapings when I was in college in the ATL and god, what a terrible environment. But yes, they were just as apathetic to Steamboat in Chicago as in the studio.

I agree with the general sentiment that this was better than the Spring Stampede match, but a classic? The finishing stretch felt thrown together, like they were just doing everything they could think of rather than building to specific, meaningful moments. It was very characteristic of both guys, but for me, didn't live up to the quality of wrestling in the body of the match. I also question the decision to wrestle a 35+ minute title match in front of a WCW studio crowd. They built the match around the idea that the crowd would be hanging on every nearfall during the frenetic stretch run. But the crowd mostly didn't give a shit and didn't seem notably invested in either guy. I've actually found it interesting in general how little the crowds seemed to sympathize with Steamboat by 1994. We think of him as the ultimate babyface, and he was still working at a very high level. But the contemporary fans did not react to him as the ultimate babyface. I'm coming off too negative overall. This was a substantial effort and a nice capstone to their rivalry.

That's an argument against the booking, not the performance, which is the subject of this thread. If the booking killed the match for you, that's fine, but that's not a useful analysis of what Cena did in the match.

I love 90s Fujiwara, but if I were introducing him to a skeptic, I'd start with the 80s stuff. Not just the New Japan but the brilliant UWF stuff against Sayama, Yamazaki and Maeda. I've never seen anyone better at building great matches around somewhat limited strikers. You will get a taste of that in 1990.

It's their last match from this period. They had more in 1998 and 1999.

It does seem random that this was the gateway drug for puro when it was probably only the third best match in Tokyo that night. I guess it was just a matter of timing and the intense admiration for Benoit among hardcore fans. Anyway, it was an excellent match, especially in the context of Sasuke's overall attempt to defeat the NJ establishment in one night. He got through the Liger door only to find one last foe who was even stronger. Some of the early work just felt like guys doing neat stuff. But once the underdog vs. powerhouse dynamic kicked in, it was great. The execution was top-notch, which you'd expect from Benoit but not necessarily from Sasuke. Both guys came out of this night looking like a million bucks.

Agree about the botch finish actually adding to the story of the match. Also agree with Loss that this holds up as a stronger match than Sasuke vs. Benoit, because the roles were so clearly defined. Liger was supposed to win this tournament, and he acted like it in everything he did. Thus, Sasuke's win came off as a huge deal, nicely accentuated by the announcer's, "Yeeehoooo!"

The early matwork here was well above the NJ juniors norm, though I agree with Loss that it didn't transcend formula. The match was just an unusually tight, well-worked version of said formula, so it was a pleasure to watch.