Childs

More Danielson always, please.

This all sounds incredibly awful, but I'm old.

I've never been an Okada fan, but I do wonder about the narrative around his "decline." Is it more a comment on the stagnant booking and waning talent pool that we've seen in pandemic-era New Japan? Is his performance really that different? The things that annoy me about him are the things that always annoyed me about him. The things he does well are the things he always did well. His case isn't much better than it was in 2019, but I don't see how it's worse.

This.

There was plenty of anti-Inoki sentiment, don't get me wrong. I just wanted to get across that our assessments of his matches, even those that didn't make the set, were not one-note. I don't particularly want to comb through all the old disc reviews to find examples of Inoki matches I didn't like, because I basically agree with the more positive views of him from recent years. He was frequently a great ace and big-match worker, and that looms larger than whatever inconsistency I perceived 15 years ago.

For the record, this was my DVDVR nomination post for the '85 Inoki-Fujinami, and I've long said our decision not to include the '88 match was a major mistake. So I think the notion that we were categorically anti-Inoki is wrong, though I don't think it's wrong to say he was a boring week-to-week worker for much of the '80s. I imagine this will be divisive. They went about 35 minutes and stayed on the mat for the first 25 or so. I thought they killed the time fairly well, working a wide enough variety of holds and showing enough intensity to keep it interesting. But some folks will probably find the body of the match dull. Fujinami popped the crowd with a mid-match scorpion and ultimately put Inoki in the figure four for several minutes (Inoki did his part by selling the leg work well.) That led into a 10-minute build to the finish, which featured some great back-and-forth action and had the crowd going apeshit. I particularly liked it when Inoki ducked Fujinami's enziguiri and hit his own to shift the momentum only to have Fujinami come back and connect with the enziguiri after all. The ending, with Fujinami fighting out of Inoki's octopus hold several times, also worked. Both men showed genuine emotion postmatch in a nice cap to an effective master vs. protege story. Nomination.

A lot of this show has been damn good, but man we've spent a lot of time on these shitty plunder fests. The art of the factional brawl is dead in mainstream American wrestling.

Those who turned on Hogan were always right.

Well, Punk had a better match with Fish than Danielson did.

I don't view it in relation to what they did in WWE. I was excited to watch Danielson wrestle whenever he got the opportunity there, even if I was frustrated with the way he was booked. I'm excited to watch him every time he gets in the ring here. I've enjoyed him more than Punk because he's better at wrestling than Punk. Always was. Which is not to say I'm down on Punk. He's working smart matches based on his re-entry story and his realistic need to shake off a little ring rust. Good on him for that. I look forward to seeing where he takes it. But I'm not going to feel bad for preferring the superior intensity and execution of a generational talent.

The strike exchanges have been Suzuki's bread and butter for years now. I rarely get the sense he wants to push for something more interesting, and I don't blame him at his age. They did a really good version of that match, with some quality mat stuff mixed in, and that's about all I was looking for. It didn't hit me as a classic, but it was pretty remarkable to have that sucker dropped in our laps on YouTube.

I mean, no one thought of Fujiwara as an all-time great worker before the film review for the DVDVR set. These reappraisals just happen sometimes. You get a few influential voices touting the body of work. You get a spark like Kingston's move to AEW, which exposed him to a wider audience. Boom, there you go. With Styles, it was pretty simple. He went to New Japan and then WWE.

The Segunda Caida love for Kingston is not new. The discussion on him hadn't kicked up in 2016, but Phil and Eric have been beating that drum for at least three years. I do think there are great Kingston performances going back a long way, to that cage match against Ian Rotten in IWA-MS and his long feud with Hero. I understand why he doesn't come across to some folks, but he's put together an impressive, unusual career. As for Homicide, he has no shot to make my list, but he was on the short list of 2000s indy stars who carried a special aura. I remember the air in the room changing when his music hit. That's something.

This is the least surprising news ever, but what a depressingly shitty company.

I was watching Dynamite with my 11-year-old (a casual fan) last night, and his reaction to the ad was: "Why the hell did anybody think that was a good idea?"

Got you. I voted for Tamura as well, even though Han was such a unique, fully formed worker from his first match on. Tamura hit higher peaks and hit them more often in RINGS, and I like the fact that he had to make his way in UWFI before he ever got there. Han just doesn't have anything like the Vader match in his career. I have Tabe's excellent career comps for both, and I'm more apt to throw on the Tamura discs. I see him in the 15-30 range with Han more like 40-50. I guess I hold it against them slightly that they were specialists; otherwise, Tamura would be a No. 1 contender. But I love the style, so it's not much of a knock.

What makes you say Han is regarded as the face of RINGS? Not saying you're wrong; I've just never thought of anyone other than Maeda as the man for that designation.

With the caveat that I have not watched this stuff for several years, I thought Pillman was better in the pre-Blondes period. Dangerous Alliance Austin struck me as a guy with a lot of tools who was still figuring out how to put everything together, whereas I thought babyface Pillman might have been the best worker in the U.S. for a brief period. I'd have to dig back in to defend that position in any detail, but when I watched all the '91 and '92 stuff on the yearbooks, that was my impression.

This feels overly negative based on what we saw last night. That match was designed to be a reintroduction, not a classic. Punk grounding Darby made psychological sense, and when it was time for them to pick it up in the stretch, he looked fine. He needs to knock off a little ring rust, but it would be a surprise if that wasn't the case, no? The guy was never a freak athlete. AEW needs some change of pace, and we know Punk can build a feud and think his way through a big match. He seems genuinely enthusiastic about doing just that with all these guys he's never wrestled. I don't know; I just didn't see anything that would cause me to write him off.

They basically had to hit a home run to meet expectations, and they hit a home run. Tip of the cap.

Man, they're keeping their foot on the accelerator with Moxley-Suzuki and Dustin-Black teed up for Wednesday.

They worked that just about perfectly.

Dave said they could go to midnight.

Yeah, I watched that. Thought it was clearly better than the title change but still more a fine performance than a standout one from Onita.

Just watched two of their matches from 1982, including Onita's title win from Crockett, and thought they were pretty good but mostly as showcases for Chavo. Onita came off as a guy who was stealing wins from a superior wrestler and not doing it in particularly charismatic fashion. He wasn't terrible or anything; I just didn't see any real hints of the wrestler he would become.