Childs
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I was extremely surprised at how much I enjoyed this. In boxing, some of your most dramatic fights come because one guy has suffered a bad cut or broken his hand. The injured fighter becomes more desperate to finish, and the opponent often gains steam as well, figuring if he can just weather a few storms, victory is on the table. This match really captured that dynamic, with Tanaka's greater weapons seeming increasingly compromised by his right arm and right leg being shot to shit. Yes, they worked a lot of nearfalls, but these carried real tension because the work had sold me on how fucked up Tanaka was and how close Sai felt to an upset. When Tanaka survived to knock Sai out at the end, he came off as a tough motherfucker instead of another macho dude reeling off spots. A little bit of slack work in the middle will keep this out of the upper reaches, but it was really a pleasant discovery.
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[2004-09-10-NOAH-Navigation Over The Date Line] Kenta Kobashi vs Akira Taue
Childs replied to Loss's topic in September 2004
From agony to ecstasy. As much as I hated the tag match from this show, I loved this. They threw a bunch of bombs but with little wasted motion, and by the end, they had a so-so crowd totally on the hook. I popped out loud when Taue reversed Kobashi's attempted power bomb from the second turnbuckle into an old man rana. I felt like Kobashi didn't want to hit him with the Burning Hammer, but he owed his old rival the respect of putting him away with the uber-finisher. Top-5 match. Taue! -
Jesus, this was awful. Awkwardly wrestled, largely heatless and of course, overly long. I have enjoyed the vast majority of matches nominated for this project, but I truly cannot fathom why this did so well in the Purotopia poll.
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I was surprised this ultimately felt like the best match on the show to me, even if I agree with the criticism of it. It reminded me of the Doc-Kobashi matches from '93 to '94--the two biggest meatheads imaginable having the most meatheady match they could possibly create. And the crowd fucking loved it, and it sort of summarized the spirit of NOAH when Kobashi was king. I'm often won over when performers take their commitment to an idea absolutely to the hilt, even if the idea doesn't fit my preferred aesthetic. Given who they were and where they were, Kobashi and Sasaki did exactly the right match. I will vote for it, even if not particularly high.
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They did some clever work early to establish the meaning of the size difference. It felt like a genuine struggle for each guy to assert his preferred match. I don't know if Bernard had improved much from his Albert run, because I honestly don't remember his Albert run very well. He was excellent at the kind of big-man selling that put over his opponent but also kept him looking like a hoss. And I'm not sure he got to do much of that in WWE, at least not in 20-minute matches. Anyhow, I thought they stuck to the story pretty well, though some dodgy execution down the stretch knocked it down a peg for me. The actual finish felt exactly right. This will probably make the lower end of my list.
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[2009-09-04-PWG-Guerre Sans Frontieres] Bryan Danielson vs Chris Hero
Childs replied to Loss's topic in September 2009
I liked their ROH match better. Also preferred their BOLA match from the year before. I agree this one was overlong and unfocused, despite some great moments. -
No, that would be incredibly lazy.
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I was going to do a whole post defending Windham and describing him as the Mickey Mantle of wrestling. But then I really looked at it and Barry was only a top worker for what, six years? And unlike Mantle in baseball, he was never the flat-out best. So that comparison doesn't work. And yet I still struggle calling him a disappointment because he was so damn good and not in a flash-in-the-pan way. This is such a common theme in sports--athletes who generate enormous excitement because they're precocious and end up labeled as disappointments despite producing very good careers. Over the years, I've tried to discipline myself to judge what they actually do instead of judging through the prism of my own expectations. But I still fail at it all the time. I don't know. If a guy has great talent and uses it to good effect but lacks the rare drive to become best of the best, is it fair to label that disappointing? Don't most of us squander our talents at least as much as Barry Windham did? I just think he's an interesting litmus test for how we judge what is vs. what could be.
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Comps for Grey, Jones, Myers, Cortez, Haward, Breaks, Serjeant, Marino, Elijah, Veidor, Rudge.
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[1999-10-29-FMW-Making of a New Legend IV] Hayabusa vs H (Exploding Anal Bomb)
Childs replied to Loss's topic in October 1999
I wondered if the stipulation was literal. And yes. Thank you FMW. -
You could say the same thing about a lot of guys who peaked in the '70s, including Brisco. We have enough of Billy looking really good in the AWA to know he was really good, just like we have enough Jack from various places to know he was really good. But for both guys, the signature stuff comes down to a few handfuls of great matches from Japan.
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I got a big batch of stuff from your source the other day and will be in British wrestling heaven once I get through all this 2000s puro. But you really have done a great service laying the groundwork with your reviews.
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This was 10 flavors of awesome. Araya appeared to break Miyamoto's nose with an elbow. The ref looked concerned and even Araya backed off. Tenryu wandered over to take a look and responded how? By punting Miyamoto in the face of course. Sweet, sweet Tenryu. The match would have made my list just for that, but then Miyamoto delivered a really spunky performance, Araya kept cutting him off by grabbing his nose and Tenryu and Kea hurled chairs at each other. So yeah, loved it.
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Tanahashi's a more dramatic bumper and better high flyer. They're on par in connecting with a crowd. Tanahashi found his identity as a top performer well before Nakamura did. I like Nakamura better, but I wouldn't say he smokes Tanahashi and certainly not in every category.
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Several people I respect have talked up Piper, but with the exception of a few matches--Valentine, Hart, Rose--I've never liked him in the ring. Nothing he did looked very convincing, and he was truly awful for most of his last run with WCW. Almost all my warm memories of him from childhood have to do with non-wrestling stuff.
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Where are the best places to read about British wrestling history? That Heritage site?
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Check out Fuchi vs. Momota 3/29/89, vs. Hiro Saito 6/12/86, vs. Kobayashi 4/6/86, vs. Kikuchi 7/12/90.
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Yeah, just watched Kobashi-Ogawa for the first time in many years, and it was great. Might be No. 1 for me in the 2000s Japan project right now, though I have a bunch of highly pimped stuff still to view. Ogawa was as good as anyone I've seen at working from the "I'm completely outgunned" point of view. His approach was such a delightful change of pace in NOAH, where everybody always tried to prove how tough they were.
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I think I know what you mean. Brisco was definitely better than Harley at intense grappling. When I say ahead of his time, I mean you could've sent Brisco forward 20 years in a time machine, and he'd have stepped into most '90s feds without much adjustment. His spring, his quickness, the snap in his execution were all remarkable. Billy Robinson is the other '70s star who always hits me the same way, and I know I'm not the only one to make that association. Harley, by contrast, has always struck me as a proto-Flair, though he crammed in more high-end offense, relative to the late '70s, than Ric did relative to the mid-'80s. In terms of the bumping, the signature spots, the way they worked as touring champs--very similar. I enjoyed their '84 All Japan match because it played on how much Harley and Ric were two sides of the same coin. I need to revisit Harley though, because I'm mostly talking about years-old impressions. I imagine he was perfectly fine at working holds, just as Flair was, even if neither could stack up to Brisco in that realm.
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Dave's exact comment was Dory "was probably the better ring psychologist and superior at playing subtle heel, which was the most important role for a world champion of that era." There's a lot of room for interpretation with the phrasing "better ring psychologist." But better to look at Dave's exact words than my recollection of them. It's certainly possible Dory worked with more of a heel dimension if you compare their respective title reigns. I honestly haven't seen enough to weigh in on that. I just thought it was interesting because in the footage I've viewed, Brisco was both a better athlete and a more expressive worker than Dory. That doesn't mean Dory sucked; Brisco was just a tremendous, ahead-of-his-time wrestler.
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Nor mine.
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Which is interesting, because in Brisco's obit, Dave portrayed Dory as the master of small touches and Jack more as the superathlete.
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You've got to watch that Ogawa/Takayama match from 9/7/02 if you haven't already. Great shit as Ogawa tried to keep his improbable title run going against the heaviest of hitters.
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Matches like this are the reasons I love these projects. I'd never watched it nor heard it mentioned as a jewel in Takayama's great 2002, but goddamn this was awesome. First off, I loved Ogawa's GHC Champ tights. Then he was so great going after Takayama's arm once he found the slightest opening. That was some of the best work around a ring post I've ever seen. As outgunned as Ogawa had seemed, he suddenly felt like the legit champ, cutting off Takayama's comebacks and everything. The finishing sequence, with Ogawa tossing off a brilliant series of roll-ups in a last stab at keeping his title, had me popping big time. Great match.