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Childs

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Everything posted by Childs

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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."
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. Childs
    This was the perfect appetite wetter for the Carny final. Doc's legwork and Kawada's selling of it were superb. And they conveyed some sense of how Kawada might put Doc away while leaving open the question of whether he could actually do it. The match would stand as an excellent draw on its own but is even better when viewed in context. Doc was a beast in '94. He was no less than excellent against any of his significant All-Japan opponents, and when in with the top-drawer guys, he delivered multiple classics. It's one of the elite years anyone had from the decade.
  12. Childs
    The story of Hokuto and Kandori learning to work together, out of dire necessity, certainly carried this to a high level. That and Hokuto's gift for showing her spirit by fighting through absolute hell (I can't help but picture Toyota and how easy her comebacks would have seemed by comparison.) There was some dopey shit that took me out of the match, like Kandori and Nakano's jog to the entrance and Aja hitting five straight piledrivers without it seeming like that big a deal. That stuff would keep it out of a MOTD discussion for me. But it was a classic wrestling story played out to great effect.
  13. Childs
    I did not think this blew away the Shawn-Razor match or that it was one of the best matches of the year. In fact, they seemed a little off at the beginning, with Smothers not quite connecting on his offense and Candido overbumping to compensate. It turned into a good match with an excellent performance from Candido. But even down the stretch, I thought their selling was spotty and that they went to the well a few times too often with the "miss move, hit ladder" formula. The ending, with the ladder breaking, was certainly dramatic. And I'm not saying this was any less than really good. I just don't love it as much as people with whom I normally agree.
  14. Childs
    You have to love the level of discourse in the comments under that article. A lot of days, I think I hate the internet more than I love it.
  15. Childs
    Foley working as a bump freak against Michaels would have made zero sense. It's fine if you weren't into the hand work, but why would you want Foley to wrestle a stupid match for his character? He was the attacker, not the attacked.
  16. Childs
    Great, great TV match. Every moment felt competitive as hell and wrestlers should watch this as a textbook on how to do hope spots and cutoffs. They had a studio crowd hanging on every nearfall. The DQ finish was a slight letdown after both guys had fought so hard, but at least the Flair run-in planted seeds of tension for the PPV match. I've long thought Austin-Steamboat was a great pairing. What a pleasure it was to catch this chapter for the first time.
  17. Childs
    I love few things more than Japanese interpromotional wrestling. I'm glad others like this as much as I do.
  18. Childs
    This had a lot of great action featuring two of my favorite joshi workers, Bull and Aja. But it also featured a lot of what I dislike about joshi, with Toyota screaming in pain one second and sprinting across the ring to hit springboard spots the next. The good outweighed the bad in this case.
  19. Childs
    I didn't think Misawa dogged it at all. I wouldn't roll it out as one of his signature performances, but I loved his determination to keep Hansen from pinning Kobashi after Stan hit the lariat. That was good "Misawa as ace" stuff. He didn't work as hard as Kobashi overall, but fuck, who did? I liked this match a lot. Baba appeared to have a blast and worked hard. Hansen was still great, nasty as fuck on offense and selling really well when appropriate. Kobashi did all of his Kobashi stuff. The crowd ate up all the nearfalls in the last 10 minutes. I'm not sure what else you'd want from this group going 35 minutes.
  20. Childs
    This was not just another Cena superman comeback. This was an almost broken Cena hitting the one lotto ticket he had on overconfident monster Brock. I don't say that to defend the big picture booking; I think Brock probably should've won. But if you just look at the match, the finish absolutely worked with everything that led up to it.
  21. Childs
    Cena-Lesnar was unbelievably compelling. I'm not sure about the booking, but as a standalone, it blew away anything at Wrestlemania and any WWE main event since Cena-Punk last year. Lesnar is a great pro wrestler in that everything he does gets over the guy he's supposed to be.
  22. Childs
    Why was the match so uncomfortable to watch? The bloody hand thing? It was definitely a punishing match but nothing that seemed out of context from these two women. I enjoyed the nastiness of it, though it wasn't as good as Nakano vs. Inoue.
  23. Childs
    Excellent match. I'm a sucker for an up-and-comer mounting a serious challenge to a veteran star only to fall just short. Nakano was so solid in everything she did. I loved her tope and lariats. Inoue often annoys me because she was a bigger wrestler who nonetheless seemed desperate to work like Toyota. But she really brought it here. I was prepared to turn on her when she started doing springboard stuff on her bad leg. But Nakano cut her off before it went too far. Match ended where it should have instead of going a beat too long.
  24. Childs
    I did not like the synchronized stuff but did like the match overall because they never lost sight of the fundamental dynamic between the two sides. There were lots of cool examples of the big asskickers tossing the little girls around, and enough neat counters from the smaller, swifter team to keep the match feeling competitive. Ozaki and Masami were my two favorite performers, but everyone got to shine. My only complaint is that it could have been little shorter given that I never believed the Devil/Dynamite/Chiggy team was losing.
  25. Childs
    I don't get Shoe's Hansen comparison, but yeah, this was a really solid TV match that could've used another 5-10 minutes. These guys always matched up well.
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