Childs
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I thought it was funny that Lawler basically said in the promo it was a knockoff of Austin vs. Vince. Needless to say, Hales was no Vince.
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I don't know if the match was any good overall, but the finishing stretch was surprisingly effective. Sting worked with a lot of energy, and Giant did fine with his force-of-nature kickouts. The crowd popped bigtime when Sting hit the third scorpion deathdrop off the top, like his victory actually meant something. That felt like a huge fucking achievement after the preceding mess of Piper-Savage vs. Hogan-Hart.
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Piper seemed incredibly out of place in all of this, and boy did the crowd not give a fuck about most of it. I give Savage for at least trying to put over his storyline. -
Booker looked great in his early run of offense before Finlay took over and set a really grinding pace as he worked over Booker's knee. Crowd didn't care quite as much about this as the Benoit match, but it served as an excellent chapter two to Booker's story for the night. The finish seemed a little off, like Booker mishandled his counter to the tombstone and then Finlay went down too easily to one big move. But that didn't matter much in the big picture.
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Booker really worked from underneath this match, which made a lot of sense given the build-up. I liked the way Benoit seized the advantage with single-leg takedowns, highlighting Booker's bad knee, even though he didn't spend the whole match attacking it. They worked some nice comeback teases and cut-offs, and the crowd was into this, which was good to see after all the work they'd put in on the series. Booker seemed to have genuinely improved over the course of a few weeks; his basic movements looked tighter. This whole series played out in satisfying fashion. Perhaps the powers that be didn't care enough to fuck it up?
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The argument from me was never that Ted was bad in Japan, merely that he didn't pop off the screen compared to the superstars around him. That's not a knock on him, but it matters a little when trying to slot him on a GOAT list. Given that Parv's not arguing him as a top-10 candidate, I don't think there's any big gap of opinion on the issue. I do wish we had more of his early babyface stuff, because I agree that played a part in the sterling reputation he carried in the '80s.
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They've gotten a lot more love in recent years than they did for a long time, when the juniors were considered king. If you look at the year-by-year threads for the '90s, you'll see a ton of praise.
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But Doc hit a much higher peak there than Ace or Spivey, who didn't exactly crank out singles classics. I think it was the perfect setting for Doc's power and physicality to translate, but he also deserves credit for not getting lost in the complexity of those matches.
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You liked those '86 All-Japan tags waaay more than Will or Kris did in nominating for the DVDVR set. I might take a look at the Martel/Zenk one, just out of curiosity. Not sure I ever saw it.
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His career somehow feels less complete than Han's, though I'm not sure that's right. There's something special about Brock that makes him hard to dismiss, despite the limited weight of his resume. I can't imagine anybody else having those matches with Cena, for example. He'll be hard to rank, but that doesn't mean he's undeserving. He could also add significantly to his case over the next year.
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I really liked his match with Fujinami from New Japan, which was part of Fujinami's incredible jr. heavyweight run in 1980. In the DVDVR nominating process, he impressed all of us with how snugly he worked. I'll have to hunt down some of his other stuff
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I don't think he's awful; actually, he's fun to watch in modest doses. It's just that a lot of his big matches over the years have given in to wretched excess. I'd like to see him adapt well to the WWE style, because he does have a lot of tools. I'd much rather watch him than Marufuji.
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I don't blame anyone who's uncomfortable with Benoit, but I think the "never connected like Eddy" thing is a cliche (not slamming you Grimmas; I thought the same thing for a long time). Benoit was hugely over in the run-up to Wrestlemania XX and plenty over at other times. He didn't do as much overt character stuff as Eddy and wasn't as charming, but his wrestling absolutely connected. There's no way to get an accurate read on how people judge his work in the context of this poll, for obvious and understandable reasons. No way around that.
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Is that because you've never watched KENTA?
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Really? I read a shitload of journalism, including yours, and I didn't think the writing was notably poor or great.
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I thought it was a good piece, and I couldn't be less interested in TNA.
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Kerry was a perfect vessel for carrying, but at some point, he deserves credit for that. You don't have to lead a great match to be essential to it. I'll have to give his case more thought.
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You mean interesting? I kid, I kid. I like Dory when he's fired up in a brawl.
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He might've been more solid. Not sure. But I remember the Steiners as an all-sizzle team, and Scott brought more of the sizzle.
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Agree with all of this. For a guy who did nothing I cared about for the better part of a decade, AJ still brings a fair number of top-100 elements to the table. I don't expect to vote for him, but if his 2015 is as good as his 2014, it'd make me think. Ultimately though, I can't give him credit for what he could've been in all those wasted years.
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Below Meng and Scott.
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Even if that's the case--and I'm not sure it's that simple--one run as a historically great flyer added to another run as maybe the greatest babyface and TV worker in WWE history amounts to a pretty spectacular career.
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I think I'd have him below Meng.
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He did a bunch of workrate stuff too. His tag matches with Black certainly trended in that direction. Not saying you need to like him in that kind of match, but it's not as if he was a straight Memphis brawler or anything. I'm unlikely to vote for Jimmy, but my favorite off-the-beaten-path performance of his came at an Evolve show Phil and I went to where he worked like a pocket Tenryu against a less experienced opponent. I mean, 5-foot-5, 150-pound Jimmy just stiffed the shit out of this guy. Fun.
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Brilliant match, one that always meets or surpasses my high expectations on rewatch. They escalated the action so intelligently. They'd wrestle evenly for a few minutes, then one guy would briefly seize the advantage, then they'd go back to plateau. But each plateau featured higher impact offense than the one before it, and each transition seemed to carry higher stakes than the previous. So they packed a ton into 34 minutes without the match ever feeling like overkill. The last five minutes took it to a whole other level. I always mark out for the spot where Kawada sort of juked Kobashi and nailed him with a kick to the mush while Kobashi was still wrong-footed. Then the crowd popped huge when Kawada did a Volk Han-style leaping submission attempt. Kobashi insisting that he win with the arm Kawada had wrecked was a perfectly Kobashi thing to do. Because he was who he was and because he sold it, the whole thing came off as a noble expression of character rather than lazy crap. Any month that has this and Tamura-Kohsaka is OK by me. We'll see by the end of '99 if this really was the last true classic from All Japan.