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Childs

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Everything posted by Childs

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Childs
    I love few things more than Japanese interpromotional wrestling. I'm glad others like this as much as I do.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. Childs
    I've never seen the whole match, but the clip made me want to track it down. They really stiffed the shit out of each other down the stretch.
  16. Childs
    Curiously heatless for something from this rivalry. Tenryu vs. Mutoh felt like a big deal, but this paled compared to the best NJ vs. WAR tags from '93.
  17. Childs
    I wasn't as enamored with this as the rest of you guys. It was about what I expected from these teams in the dome, and the finishing stretch was exciting. But I felt I could have wandered away for five minutes at any time during the body of the match and missed very little. Not thatthe work was bad, but one moment didn't build to the next in any meaningful way. That's usually how I feel about the Steiners at this point in my life. I can still see why I loved them as a kid, but they don't much suck me in anymore. As for ranking this against other 1/4 matches, I'd put it well behind Vader/Inoki from '96 and Choshu/Tenryu from '93 and probably behind the Hash matches from '95 and '96.
  18. Childs
    I'm guessing it's a freelance arrangement; Grantland uses a lot of freelancers. But good for him. Good piece too; shows the value, to Dave, of working with actual editors.
  19. Childs
    Those musical intros were awful and buzz killing. I don't think this show has been awful match for match, but I kind of hate it.
  20. Childs
    Johnny Ace's suit might be my favorite thing about the show so far.
  21. Childs
    It was a fine little match, but no, it didn't feel like anyone cared that much.
  22. Childs
    I try not to oveereact to things, but if I had been able to get a refund after that opener, I might have. Sometimes, I fucking hate WWE.
  23. Childs
    Piggybacking on what Loss said, one of the things that confused me about trios matches when I first started watching was the ease with which the second pin often occurs at the end of a fall. I didn't get why they rarely went for the drama of evening a fall at one pin apiece. I don't think twice about it now.
  24. Childs
    This is unquestionably true, and yet, I have to admit that's how I have joshi classifed in my wrestling brain. So I'm less open to a joshi match that might be good than I would be to pimped matches in most other genres. You almost have to start out by convincing me that the match won't fall into my preconceived notions of what sucks about joshi. That's unlikely to change at this point, but yeah, sexism isn't at the root of my bias. Have you watched Kansai/Kong yet? Main event slugfest with a two-year title chase finally being realized. It's not my favorite Joshi match of the year, but knowing what you like, I think it's the one you are most likely to like. Yeah, I watched it. It's a great match, certainly up my alley stylewise. I've probably overstated my aversion to Joshi a little bit; there are at least 15 or 20 matches I'd unreservedly call great. Hokuto/Kandori, for example, is about as good as it gets. It's just that I have been disappointed by a lot of highly touted '90s Joshi matches, and I've tended to be disappointed for the same reasons. So that colors the way I look at the whole genre and makes me less apt to appreciate the diversity touted by Joshi advocates. Joshi is something I wanted to like, but if the experience doesn't live up to the hope, that's ultimately hard to overcome. Will mentioned the '80s project. I was excited to watch the Joshi discs after reading some of OJ's posts on the unearthed treasures from that decade. But after about 10 discs, I just didn't have any appetite for it. Some of the matches were really good. There was diversity of style. Dump was an indelible character. But I just got sick of it in a way I never did with All Japan or New Japan or early '80s Portland. And ultimately, I don't want my hobby to be an exercise in grim determination.
  25. Childs
    This is unquestionably true, and yet, I have to admit that's how I have joshi classifed in my wrestling brain. So I'm less open to a joshi match that might be good than I would be to pimped matches in most other genres. You almost have to start out by convincing me that the match won't fall into my preconceived notions of what sucks about joshi. That's unlikely to change at this point, but yeah, sexism isn't at the root of my bias.
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