Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

Childs

Moderators
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    5001

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Childs

  1. Childs
    Are you saying Tenryu didn't match up well with Hansen? I thought they matched up great -- one of my favorite All-Japan singles series of the the '80s.
  2. Childs
    JDW and others can probably speak to the issue of Tenryu perception over time, but I've always gotten the sense that his physical awkwardness was a big part of it. It's a less pronounced issue than with Baba or Taue, but he did not come off as a natural athlete. The constant contrast to Jumbo probably didn't help on that front. To his credit, Tenryu turned his lack of grace into an advantage, building a style that emphasized effort and desire to inflict damage from any and all angles. He was like the Rocky Marciano to Jumbo's Ali.
  3. Childs
    That was a strength pre-WAR as well. He brought tremendous intensity to tags in which he was the biggest star by far. I'm thinking in particular of a match from '89 in which Tenta and Shunji Takano were the opponents, but there were plenty of others. It was like Tenryu just couldn't stand to be in a bad or boring tag match. Jumbo, by contrast, was often content to stay in the background of matches like that. Not a knock on him; it's just that Tenryu's effort in those kinds of matches is a real positive for his case.
  4. Childs
    I will be interested to see if a strong Jumbo vs. Tenryu debate gets going as people work through the '80s set. For me, Jumbo was unquestionably better from the beginning of their respective careers until Tenryu turned on him in 1987. Tenryu equaled or surpassed Jumbo in '88 and '89, when his style and spirit really drove the main event scene, despite his old partner's continued technical superiority. Jumbo regained the lead from 1990 through mid-1992 with his brilliant stuff against the next generation. But then Tenryu took the next 18 years (and counting) with his ability to persist as a top guy in various promotions, against a wide range of opponents. Of course, that's just the career bulk analysis. I'm more interested to see if people come away from the set thinking one guy's peak was clearly better than the other's. I've watched it all, and I'm still not sure.
  5. Childs
    No, people also took a pretty big dump on his once-revered NJ junior run in the voting for the '80s set. Takada is a guy who looks great if you do a superficial survey of his career. He was in a lot of great matches, no doubt. But if you look at those matches closely, he was more often than not the lesser performer. And if you take a big bite of his career, you start to see how often he gave flat performances or dragged matches down with his incredibly half-assed matwork. I would still consider him for a top 100, because in the right setting with the right opponent, he could make magic. But he was way too hit-and-miss to merit GOAT discussion.
  6. Childs
    The range of responses to Dylan's query is, in itself, an argument for the value of periodically revisiting the GOAT question. I know that when I began delving deeper into the worldwide wrestling scene, the threads associated with the Smarkschoice poll were some of the most valuable references I found. The ultimate answer didn't matter to me as much as the little sub-arguments, which gave me all kinds of ideas about what to watch and helped me to understand the community of critics that had evolved online. I hope the 80s projects, other polls, the threads around Will and Loss' yearbooks, etc. will provide the same service for the few souls who stray into hardcore fandom going forward. Whether you're talking about wrestling, baseball or TV shows, I find "who is greater than whom" discussions irresistible. They help me to frame my own thoughts about the stuff I like, and if the right people are involved, I learn. As for the original question, I don't think the GOAT field has expanded considerably since the Smarkschoice poll. I'm sure Lawler, Fujiwara, Tenryu and Hash would do better if we ran a poll right now. Benoit, Liger, Kobashi and Takada would do worse. But I don't know that the pool of guys pulling Top 5 votes would be significantly expanded. I can't speak to the change from 10 or 15 years ago, because I wasn't around.
  7. Childs
    I don't know, I thought it was neat to have a big fight involving the "lost" star of New Japan. It said something about where wrestling was going, even though it wasn't wrestling. With a project like this, I don't see the need to be super strict.
  8. Childs
    This was probably my favorite M-Pro match of the year. The 10/10 match might have been showier but not by much, and this one struck me as harder hitting. Hamada, Yakushiji and Togo all turned in great individual performances. The crowd was great. If I do a top 20 for the year, this will make it.
  9. Childs
    The beginning of this felt a little heavy on exposition and a little light on wrestling. But once it got down to Dandy vs. Santo, they delivered the kind of gritty violence you want from hair vs. mask. It was amazing to hear how little sympathy the fans had for Dandy, even after Santo's rudo turn. Dandy did a lot of great selling in the match, and I dug his attempts to fight out of Santo's submission. Santo was just vicious throughout. I liked a few of the CMLL trios from early in the year, but this still probably held up as my favorite lucha match of '96.
  10. Childs
    Thrilling stuff here. They did a great job of establishing their key weapons right off the bat, with Tenryu particularly shining at putting over Takada's kicks. The match lost a little steam when they went to the mat, but even there, Tenryu kept things interesting with his selling and attempts to hook Takada's foot. The stretch run was just breathtaking with Takada landing huge kick after huge kick and Tenryu responding with his chops, punches and lariats. I loved the moment when Tenryu seemed on the verge of being knocked out only to bull Takada over with a desperation sumo charge. I also liked Takada kneeing his way out Tenryu's quasi-full-nelson submission attempt. These guys could have coasted by on star power alone but good lord did they beat the hell out of each other. One of my favorite matches of the year.
  11. Childs
    That's interesting. I didn't respond to this match at all. Maybe I'll have to rewatch.
  12. Childs
    This was the antithesis of the ironman match with Bret in that something interesting seemed to happen almost every moment. I guess that's a tribute to Foley's creativity among other things. But this was also the best Shawn looked as champion. You really could've come away from this thinking, "That's a tough motherfucker who fights back with great focus when his title is in jeopardy." I never thought much of Shawn as an offensive wrestler, but you would never guess that failing from this match. I will be interested to see if this or the the Bret/Austin match from November ends up as my WWF MOTY. I'd be more OK with the finish if it had led to another big match with Vader. But yeah, at this point, I just shrug and pretend it ended with the superkick off the chair.
  13. Childs
    I absolutely agree that they would have been better off using falls to create momentum shifts and plot twists. They spent too much of the time going nowhere in particular. In general, I agree with OJ that 60-minute matches aren't a good idea. It's odd that they've been fetishized over the years. But I did just watch the 10/18/96 draw between Kobashi and Kawada and found it neither tedious nor over-the-top ridiculous with the big moves. Would it have been better as a 40-minute match with a finish? Probably. Was it a top-10 All Japan match for the year? Maybe, maybe not. But Kawada was so good at layered selling and crafting nifty transition spots, and Kobashi brought such a deep well of offense that it never went off the rails.
  14. Childs
    This was an incredibly tone-deaf match layout given the crowd. I mean two five-minute overtimes? Really? I don't know that you can blame the workers. They also had the pay-per-view audience to consider and might not have been allowed to call an audible. But it made for an unpleasant spectacle overall.
  15. Childs

    Liger in 2000

    Childs replied to Loss's topic in Pro Wrestling

    Yeah, if you watch early Yamada you realize how tiny he really was. He jacked his physique beyond all reason for his body type, probably even more than Benoit and Eddy did.
  16. Childs
    Yeah, I saw after posting that you really liked the match, which made me want to rewatch it. So perhaps I will also have some second-take notes. But I agree very much with your general breakdown of the NWO. Hogan was fine in the ring, but Nash and Hall brought little presence to this or most of their matches from the period. There was just such a disconnect between the aura they created as characters and the actual physical performance.
  17. Childs
    They got off to an excellent start with HBK looking relatively crisp on his hit-and-run offense and Vader looking appropriately devastating when he took command. Great strength spot when HBK tried to flip Vader out of the ring with a headscissors, but Vader just snatched him and hurled him about 10 feet face-first. It's hard to fathom why they booked two false finishes. These guys didn't need that kind of help to fill 20 entertaining minutes. Because of the booking, this one will always feel like a missed opportunity. I think I found the earlier boiler room brawl more satisfying.
  18. Childs
    For all the sharp booking that went into the early months of the NWO launch, they rarely paid it off in the ring, did they? I mean, with all the craziness of the previous few months, this should have been great. But instead, they raced through the match to get to the Sting stuff, which was more set-up for a payoff that, notoriously, never came. Was it just that the NWO guys lacked commitment to the in-ring moments? Was that a mistake Bischoff made in composing the group? Or was it irrelevant given how entertaining the weekly TV stuff was?
  19. Childs
    Kind of a bummer that there's no tape of the arena matches from this feud. The TV segments were great fun.
  20. Childs
    This felt like an absolute war between two huge stars, with Tenryu joining Fujiwara on the list of guys who could beat some passion out of Takada. I loved Tenryu's ground-and-pound elbows and the straight rights he fired in response to Takada's kicks. But Takada gave as good as he got with some vicious leg kicks and that cringe-inducing series of knees in the corner. The ending sequence was great, with Tenryu showing his will by attacking with the lariat arm that Takada had just worked over. I wish Takada hadn't looked quite so nonchalant when putting on the final submission, but that's a quibble. This was my kind of wrestling.
  21. Childs
    This fight was held back a bit by the rule against punching on the ground. Funaki seemed best positioned to attack when he took Bas down, but he couldn't really do anything in Bas' guard. Bas was on another level in the standing game, and with Funaki neutralized on the ground, this became stalk and destroy. Funaki showed a lot of guts in standing and fighting, and it was fun to watch Bas' striking. But I don't think I'd call it a great fight, as others have. I'm glad it was on the set.
  22. Childs
    I'm not sure I had ever seen this match, but it's a worthy addition to their great matches from earlier in the decade. Hansen turned in a great selling performance after posting his lariat arm. I appreciated how much he stuck with it and made it a key part of the finishing stretch. It felt character-appropriate, because he came off more as an aging gunslinger than the bionic cowboy of years past. It amazes me that some think of Hansen as a guy who made up for precision with stiffness. Watch the timing of his cutoff spots -- impeccable, even this late in his career. I also loved Kobashi's body punches as a response to Hansen's early-match potatoes. All in all, another testament to the greatness of All-Japan main events.
  23. Childs
    This was the best RINGS match on the set so far. Tremendous creativity and intensity to the submission attempts with a real sense that either guy could win.
  24. Childs
    Danielson is an easy top 100 for me at this point, even with Japan and Mexico in the mix. Cena would have a good shot at my US/Canada top 100.
  25. Childs
    I thought Fujinami got in plenty of stuff given the context of his shattered nose. I loved him calling back to his cruiswerweight days with the early topes and throwing desperate potato shots once Tenryu had him in trouble. Tenryu is probably the all-time-great dick. Can't beat his contemptuous little facials as he booted Fujinami in his busted nose. I liked the fact that he kept looking at the ref to stop it, because it made Fujinami's last rally all the more dramatic. Fujinami gushing blood on Tenryu's chest as he held him in the dragon sleeper was another tremendous visual. This, Muta-Shinzaki and Hash-Takada made for a perfect run of dome-show matches.
×
×
  • Create New...