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Childs

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Everything posted by Childs

  1. 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.
  2. Childs
    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.
  3. Childs
    God, the similarities between O'Reilly and RE, both in content and style, are eery.
  4. Childs
    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.
  5. Childs
    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.
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  7. Childs
    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.
  8. Childs
    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.
  9. Childs
    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.
  10. Childs

    Cena/Lesnar

    Childs replied to Slasher's topic in Pro Wrestling

    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.
  11. Childs
    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.
  12. Childs
    It's their last match from this period. They had more in 1998 and 1999.
  13. Childs
    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.
  14. Childs
    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!"
  15. Childs
    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.
  16. Childs
    I've seen this match at least a half-dozen times and it never loses its appeal. It's the classic match-up of guy with the biggest knockout punch vs. great counterpuncher. All the spots showcasing Williams' brute strength are awesome, and you really don't know if Kawada can break him down. But Kawada is always able to duck the one left hook to the chin, aka the backdrop driver. And he's so precise with his kicks that you feel Williams is taking real damage when Kawada finds an opening. By the last minutes of the match, Williams has taken enough accumulated punishment that Kawada slides fluidly into the role of finisher. I'm talking about the match in boxing terms, because that's the rhythm it evokes for me. Great shit -- one of the top two singles matches of Doc's career and top 5 for Kawada.
  17. Childs

    Cena/Lesnar

    Childs replied to Slasher's topic in Pro Wrestling

    I could see it losing a little luster with age, because part of the excitement in real time was that I had no idea what the fuck was going to happen. And OJ is correct that part of that flowed from it being so different than the typical WWE main event. But this was my initial reaction: Left me buzzing like no WWE match in ages. How often do you get the aura of real violence -- Ishikawa/Ikeda, Lucha mask vs. match, Tenryu-Hashimoto violence -- in the WWE? Brock's overall performance was awesome; I loved the little touches like him deadlifting Charles Robinson with one hand and him stepping on Cena's hand and scoffing the first time Cena went for the chain. And all props to Cena for letting that scary motherfucker bust him up and working a hell of a match from the bottom. I didn't know if we'd get a WWE match this year to contend with Finlay's best, Panther-Casas or the Santito match. But this was right up there for me. Edit: I thought about this more, and on the other hand, the match might hold up really well because it was so simple. Basically, you had a scary heel legitimately roughing up the face of the company, who endured and sold a terrible beating long enough to cash in on his one window of opportunity. That's a classic wrestling story and obviously connected with the live crowd in a big way. When I think back on matches I love from 20 and 30 years ago, they often fit a similar description, with the physical grace of the work taking a back seat.
  18. Childs
    Piledrivers in joshi have never been a big deal ever so you're looking for something that doesn't really exist in this case. I know, and I never would have thought twice about it if Aja had only hit one or two. But I felt she was trying to make a point (I guess about Hokuto's neck) by hitting five in a row. Hokuto's performance didn't pay off that particular point for me, strong as it was overall. Kandori running Bull down the ramp irritated me a lot more.
  19. Childs
    I agree that it has featured the best wrestling of any yearbook through the first third of the year. I wonder if the tail end will feel a little weaker, with Hogan ruining WCW and the best of the best All-Japan stuff falling in the first 2/3 of the year. Guess we'll see. It's an enjoyable set for me, because, though I've seen most of the highlight matches piecemeal, I was a freshman in college in 1994 and had drifted far away from wrestling fandom. So I'm seeing stuff in sequence for the first time. That was also the case for 1995, which was really great but less engaging week to week than '94.
  20. Childs
    Williams-Kobashi always feels like watching the two biggest meathead jocks in your high school class fighting for the attention of a pretty girl. There's always a lot of macho posturing and a sense that they just love being physical in front of an audience. There's never a ton of strategy or attempt to establish contrast in character. They don't hit the heights of Hansen-Kobashi or Kawada-Williams, but it's still a crowd-pleasing show.
  21. Childs
    The rhythm in this match felt a little off. Hansen's initial control segment went on a few beats too long without setting up any specific vulnerability for Doc. Things improved once Doc turned the tide by targeting Stan's injured ribs, but the crowd was disengaged by then. Hansen in peril was more interesting than Doc in peril, both because he was selling a specific injury and because he always seemed to be trying to get back to offense with his nasty little counter shots. They never really went toe-to-toe as the lariat came very quickly after Stan countered out of the backdrop suplex. Good match overall, but I can't say it grabbed me viscerally. I think I liked their 1990 match better.
  22. Childs
    I recall liking a match they had in 1990. Not at a "this is great" level but at least as a fun brawl between bad motherfuckers. edit: And I see it's on a Schneider comp, and Phil described it as a "balls out fight" between "two of the baddest MFs in wrestling history."
  23. Childs
    This almost felt like a juniors match with the athleticism and the even-steven exchanges early. I guess it's a tribute to Kobashi that he could have a good match in this style the night after a heavyweight war with Hansen. But I can't say this was what I wanted to see from him in the middle of the Carny as a follow-up to his big Hansen win.
  24. Childs
    I appreciated how straightforward the match was in picking up the thread from the previous night's Hansen/Kobashi. Stan left no doubt what the theme would be, shielding his ribs with his posture to start the match. Taue's attack to the ribs was less dynamic than Kobashi's, though I liked him standing on Hansen's midsection and dickishly grinding his foot. But the real takeaway for me was that Hansen could produce a very good match built almost entirely on selling. I can't say it enough in these yearbook threads; I think he was one of the top few sellers in wrestling history. He was absolutely convincing as a guy who was miserable to be out there but who couldn't bring himself not to fight. It was almost poignant. I'm really enjoying watching this Carny as a total story.
  25. Childs
    I love a good body attack, so of course, I loved this match. Kobashi's offense to the ribs looked really nasty, and Hansen did a masterful job of selling it, even as he tried to put Kobashi away with a hellacious run of offense. I liked how Kobashi's resilience, combined with the pain, led Stan to try an uncharacteristic top-rope dive and how that dive turned the tide. I also liked how a dazed Kobashi threw his body indiscriminately at Hansen's midsection after Stan couldn't follow up on the lariat. Kobashi was going to have to fight through a terrible beating to have any chance against Hansen. And he did. But I appreciated him winning with smart opportunism rather than blind courage. The win felt like a big moment well-earned. Best match of the Carny so far and probably top 5 for the year to date.
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