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Childs

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Everything posted by Childs

  1. Childs
    Not a criticism at all, because it's not a classic match by any means, but I was curious why you guys only took the finish of this one.
  2. Childs
    More proof that these guys were gold against one another, though there was something very strange about watching a Ron Garvin match with Tony Schiavone announcing in the WWF. Anyway, I loved the combination of assbeating and carny nonsense involving the leg braces. It felt more like a standout match from the territories than something from McMahonland. Thank God Monsoon wasn't announcing. He would have been an insufferable scold about the attempted pins in a submission match.
  3. Childs
    I know that was a talking point during the '80s All-Japan watching, but I'm not sure I ever agreed. I watched pretty much every Footloose match on tape during the nominating process. Fuyuki was better in certain matches. But Kawada always had better offense, and he was damn good as Tenryu's partner in some pretty big matches. He just didn't look very good here.
  4. Childs
    I actually didn't find the Tenryu/Jumbo stuff that memorable and thought it was a lousy performance for Kawada (by the standard he established in '88-'89, not judging him against his peak.) But again, surly Tenryu made the match. He almost felt like a character melting down at this stage, with his insistence on trying to bust up Takagi's face and his desire to fight everyone at ringside. Seemed only appropriate that his lack of control cost his team any shot at winning.
  5. Childs
    This was a touch disappointing, probably because I'm a fan of both guys. It was a solid match, with Sawyer getting to do a lot of his signature stuff. But it would have been better if Arn had gotten in more of a comeback before the interference.
  6. Childs
    Unlike Pete, I'm a fan of UWF style. But I agree that this match encompassed a lot of the worst of it. I didn't mind the pauses and restarts for rope breaks and knockdowns. I did mind the numerous sections of listless matwork, a common problem for Takada and an occasional problem for Maeda. The groundwork in Yamazaki/Anjoh, for example, reached a whole different level of intensity. The Takada/Maeda match-up worked best when they went to war standing, as they did on 11/10/88. I did like the finish, with Takada taking Maeda's ankle in a neat way and Maeda really selling his desperation to get out before tapping. I also liked Takada's little celebration, putting over how big a deal it was to beat the ace.
  7. Childs
    It didn't get dropped, but it's in deep freeze because no one who has the footage is terribly enthusiastic about going through it.
  8. Childs
    People love to talk about the greatest anything. There are tons of books, columns, discussion threads, etc. attempting to establish canon in film, pop music and any other kind of art. And yes, it's a particular obsession in sports coverage. If I wanted to inflame my newspaper's readers beyond reckoning, all I'd have to do is write a blog post saying Johnny Unitas wasn't one of the five greatest quarterbacks ever or that Cal Ripken was right when he said Adrian Beltre was a better third baseman than Brooks Robinson. People eat that shit up, so why should it be any different with wrestling?
  9. Childs
    This really was excellent. The Rockers looked so sharp with all of their clever teamwork spots to the point where they felt like favorites to win. The match wasn't at the level of their best AWA stuff against Rose and Somers, but as a one-team performance, it was as good as I've seen them look. At first, I thought Shawn went down a little easily after the Fuji interference. But I changed my mind. A match like that should feel like a tightrope walk for the smaller team, with any slip representing potential disaster.
  10. Childs
    This is the kind of match I'd show to a Tenryu skeptic. He made a whatever tag interesting just by being a great son of a bitch.
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  12. Childs
    Good stuff that did not strike me as New Japan juniorish. Loss, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a Liger-Otani match in which the opening matwork was this competitive or submission-focused (not knocking those matches; they have other virtues). They also threw in some nasty strikes, highlighted by Anjoh's knee in the corner and Yamazaki's flurry of headbutts. UWF in 1990 was hit and miss, but this was a hit and one of my favorite matches on Disc 1.
  13. Childs
    This felt like kind of a throw-away match, though the parties involved were talented enough that it was still fun to watch. I would have liked a more competitive tercera caida. As it was, most of the good stuff came in the primera, so the match had an unfortunate inverse build.
  14. Childs
    Man, this was great TV wrestling. It's a shame Eaton never got a significant singles run in WCW, because he had it all -- huge bumps, nasty offense, superb timing, mastery of the heel interplay with Cornette. Flair, meanwhile, just continued his great work from '89 as a tough babyface. The toe-to-toe exchanges in this felt so hardfought and violent. This got me psyched for the year in WCW, a lot of which I haven't seen since it originally aired.
  15. 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.
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  17. Childs
    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.
  18. Childs
    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.
  19. Childs
    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.
  20. Childs
    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
  21. Childs
    Also, the Sano-Shamrock from PWFG 5/19/91.
  22. Childs
    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.
  23. Childs
    He often gets called out for it, and people love him anyway.
  24. Childs
    I'd add the 8/8/98 Hash vs. Tenryu even though it's a lesser match than 8/1/98 G1 match.
  25. Childs
    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.
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