Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

Childs

Moderators
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    5000

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Childs

  1. Childs
    It's funny to come here and read your thoughts, Loss, because my strongest impression while watching the match was, "Wow, Benoit really looks like a serious contender for best wrestler in the world." You expect his big power moves to be perfectly executed and devastating, but he looked so tight and vicious on the mat. And he fit it all around a nice little story of continually underestimating Kanemoto's toughness. I know a lot of people have trouble debating Benoit as a wrestler, but this felt like a top 5-10 match for his career (from the yearbooks, I'd only rate the 6/11/96 match against Eddy ahead of it.)
  2. Childs
    Not sure if I saw this anywhere else in the thread, but Genichiru Tenryu/Ashura Hara v. Atsushi Onita/Tarzan Goto from WAR 3/2/94 is a must. Tenryu v. Tatsumi Kitahara from 11/29/94 WAR is also good. The 1/5/94 tag referenced earlier in the thread is Tenryu & Kikihara vs. Mutoh & Samurai. I haven't watched the WAR six-man tourney from 6/30/94 but there are some intriguing combos. You also might want Inoki/Tenryu from the NJ dome show for historical value. From UWFI, I liked Sano vs. Tamura from 5/6/94
  3. Childs
    Yeah, I know it's not on the set but I thought that six-man was a total blast, with Baba having a great time and Kawada busting out old Footloose high spots.
  4. Childs
    I'll probably have a firmer opinion on this after going through the set, but was this the greatest Carny of all time? You had great matches from every possible combination of the pillars, several mid-level MOTYCs from the body of the tournament and an undisputed classic in the final. I like '94 as well with Hansen and Doc in the mix, and '93 featured some great matches, but this one seems pretty hard to top.
  5. Childs
    If this is a great match, joshi is just lost on me as an art form. From the extended run of my-turn/your-turn 2 1/2 counts in the first fall to the shitty table spots to the complete unwillingness to sell anything for more than 30 seconds, I thought this was dreadful. Not disappointing, dreadful. The effort was there, no doubt, but that's the only good thing I can think to say. I need to stop commenting on joshi, because I don't enjoy being this kind of crank.
  6. Childs
    This was exactly the match you'd want these guys to have. Kid did all the expected bouncing around and selling, but in a way, Bam Bam made the match by really putting over Kid's offense. I loved the spot where Bam Bam blocked a kick, countered with a quick, perfect enzuigiri and then ran over to high five Dibiase. Great ending too, with Kid slamming Bigelow off the top into a nearfall and then getting caught off his own top-rope move into a finishing slam. I didn't think this was too squashy. Kid got a big run of offense and a few hope spots that the crowd really bought. Overall, a great example of why the yearbooks rule, because I never would have tracked this down on my own.
  7. Childs
    Interesting analogy. I always think guys like that are underrated as athletes. Kawada looked like a dumpy little dude, sure, but you don't have the timing he did (I'm thinking of the leaping kicks to the faces of running opponents) without terrific natural coordination. I think he was a better natural athlete in many ways than Kobashi and Misawa (who, as you know, took five years to look comfortable executing his big spots.) Akiyama might have been a better natural athlete than all of them, given how quickly he fit in. Is Taue Tom Glavine? I don't think any one of them is Smoltz, exactly. Maybe Akiyama could be Kevin Millwood. Tom Boswell wrote a really good profile of Maddux for Playboy that talked about his underappreciated athletic ability. I'm rambling, but I'm fascinated by great athletes trapped in visually unimpressive bodies.
  8. Childs
    The Mutoh-Owen match has received love in some quarters over the years. I don't recall having a strong feeling about it one way or another, but it's a match-up people might enjoy if you have space.
  9. Childs
    The yearbooks are a great way to breeze along, because you never bog down with one thing. In your case, it's interesting that All Japan feels like a grind because based on your comments, it seems you liked a lot of the matches you watched most recently. I'd urge you to try and stick it out with the promise that a lot of the best stuff comes at the end. In general, I go through different phases. If I'm working on an 80s set, I try to be disciplined and watch at least a little bit of footage from that promotion every day (I'm currently slacking on that bigtime.) But I go through other periods when I just say fuck it; I'm going to watch whatever I feel like popping in on a given night. In general, I try to remember that it's a hobby and I should watch what brings me bliss.
  10. Childs
    Do you think Buddy should get in just for work? I think he has a better case than some of the "work" candidates like Hase and Saito (and of course Angle but that's a losing argument with the WON crowd). It also seems indisputable that he was the longtime centerpiece of a successful territorial promotion. But as you say, the numbers might not be there to make that argument as strong as it could be. I think of him as Lawler with 1/3 as long a career, but again, I'm not sure that's a winning POV given the voting base.
  11. Childs
    On the theme of All Japan matches from early in the year, you should consider Doc and Gordy's title win over Hansen and Tenryu, which I think happened on 3/6/90. First big match for Miracle Violence and one of Tenryu's last in AJ. I'd also include Tenryu-Savage from the AJ/WWF show -- lots of fun watching Savage work American heel schtick in that context. From New Japan, the Hash/Choshu match from 11/1/90 should make the cut. You talked about the emergence of the Musketeers and that's one of my favorite old guard vs. new guard matches from the promotion.
  12. Childs
    I was very pleased that Walton made it. He really defines British wrestling for me in a lot of ways. Doc was a so-so candidate, but I had a positive instinctive reaction to his election and enjoyed the bio. Certainly not a bad year in the wash.
  13. Childs
    He tended to be a very visible part of matches and angles, overturning decisions, cutting promos, getting into it with wrestlers in a heavy-handed way. You could argue, and some did during discussion of the set, that the fault lay more with Fritz Von Erich as the booker than with Manning himself. But regardless, Manning was the epitome of a ref who acted like he was just as important as the wrestlers.
  14. Childs
    David Manning of World Class was the most reviled ref from the 80s project.
  15. Childs
    He still owes us a Rey bio, doesn't he?
  16. Childs
    It's hard to have fruitful arguments about Buddy, because even a lot of the people on this board haven't seen his peak stuff from Portland. We really do need to finish off the Portland DVDVR set (on which I've been the slug) and get that shit out there. But I'm right there with Dylan and Will in thinking the guy was phenomenal. He was like Funk in that he always seemed to come up with a way to make a match interesting. Whether jawing with an old lady at ringside or building a story around his wig or unleashing a devastating attack on his opponent's back, he always had some idea of how to engage the audience. He was a more creative, thoughtful wrestler than Flair, a master at keeping the same crowd excited week after week, year after year. But yeah, Flair beats him on body of work.
  17. Childs
    Why would his stock rise 10-fold? It's not like his great matches from 1980s NWA/WCW are obscure. They've been pimped for 25 years, and the "Flair could have a good match with anybody" talking point is as old as they come. None of what you're saying is likely to be a revelation to anyone reading this thread. Flair is clearly a strong contender for best wrestler of the 1980s, but he's not a blow away choice for those who love Lawler, Fujiwara, Jumbo etc. Hackneyed hyperbole is not going to change that.
  18. Childs
    Rey is really great at hope spots and pacing a comeback. He's the quintessential babyface of the last 10 years.
  19. Childs
    This was more subdued than their title match the previous month, but I still found a lot to like. Misawa showed more focus by directing all of his offense at the lariat arm (I liked the takedown variations that came from outside his normal repertoire.) And Hansen delivered his usual standout selling. I always enjoy watching him improvise offense from unusual angles when his primary weapon is damaged. Shoe nailed the feeling of the finishing move. It came off as Stan going all in on his last card and winning the pot. I could see the argument that these guys wrestled too often in a condensed period and didn't progress enough from match-to-match. But taken on its own, this featured a lot of well-done stuff and effectively dramatized the almost-there nature of Misawa's assault on the mountain. If it's a disappointment, that says a lot about how great these guys were.
  20. Childs
    Sasaki is Chuck Klein! Am I the only one who finds this whole question of "Who was the biggest draw?" really tedious? I'm not saying that discussion of the business side has no place or can't be interesting. But I'm not fundamentally interested in a HOF that's based on that as a central question.
  21. Childs
    Gran Hamada. Fujiwara turned 45 in 1994 and was still pretty damn great.
  22. Childs
    He just seemed holier-than-thou in general. He wasn't about being a nice guy and helping his friends; he was about indoctrinating the weak-minded to his moral code and overshadowing everything with self-aggrandizing displays. He was clearly much more Old Testament God than New Testament God. As a kid, I was invariably thrilled when anyone turned on him, because it always seemed like the reasonable human response.
  23. Childs
    I happened to toss this in last night. It's another great testament to the depth of early '90s All Japan. This is not a pimped match at all, and Misawa-Hansen is known as a semi-disappointing series compared to Kawada-Hansen and Kobashi-Hansen. But this was a hell of a match that did exactly what it was supposed to do. It had the hot opening, some brutal, brutal offense from Hansen, great selling of accumulated damage from both guys, frenzy-inducing nearfalls. I particularly liked the finishing sequence, with Misawa barely getting his foot on the rope after the first lariat, staging a rally built on the big elbow and then falling to a pulled-out-the-ass lariat. Watching it, you could have no doubt that Misawa was a future champion, but he wasn't quite there. He was like the 1987 Detroit Pistons. Man, I think Hansen might be my No. 1 if we ever do a GOAT poll again. His performances -- from keeping his own character over with the filthy offense to putting his opponents over to the exact right degree -- were just so on point for so many years. I saw Loss and JDW talking about Misawa-Kawada I in the context of the WWF MOTYs. I thought the same thing about this. If it had happened in WWF, it would have been an instant classic.
  24. Childs
    It might have been a more fun read with a few more voices in the story, but in a way, I admire the notion that a stripped-down recitation of Flair's legal history paints the truest picture of his existence. I'm sure the writer wanted it to feel uncomfortable. Has anyone else gotten the impression that Flair just isn't terribly bright? It's hard to distinguish between that and his gross immaturity, but I remember thinking the same thing after watching his shoot interview.
  25. Childs
    Wow, this thread was actually productive.
×
×
  • Create New...