Jetlag
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Johnny Ace – least talked about 90s AJ guy? He was a pretty good stand in for Misawa as Kobashi's tag partner here. His stuff is not as overexposed as the rest of the AJ crew and his games around hitting Ace Crushers and DDTs are neat. I really liked the parts where they beat the shit out of eachother. Lots of kicks and slaps to the face. The early going was around the Holy Demon Army trying to exploit weaknesses, and the Dynamic Dudes trying to, you know, prevent them from doing that. Eventually though Kawada almost decapitates Kobashi with a nasty headkick which allows Taue to set up some leg work. The leg work ended up being filler but was gritty enough and didn't go long. Quite the epic destruction of Kobashi towards the end with a great build to an apron spot. Some neat sequences around Kobashi & Ace trying to prevent the inevitable. The main thing I didn't like was the tendency to absorb a strike, and then hulk up and hit a strike of your own, which had crept into All Japan at this point. There's nothing dumber than making an angry face after you got kicked in the face. Other than that, good job crew. -
Ayako Hamada vs. Chihiro Hashimoto (Sendai 4/19) was a really fun match between two thickly built wrestlers. I really liked the opening exchanges, nice matwork and shoulderblocks, with Hamada's snappy lucha armdrags looking credible against Hashimoto's amateur stuff. I loved how well they worked stuff like abdominal stretch reversals and with Hashimoto moves like a hip toss or senton look brutal because she's so thick. The match didn't have great direction but there was some sense of build (e.g. building to Hashimoto hitting the 2nd rope senton, building to the first german suplex, building to first big Hashimoto nearfall with the short arm clotheslines etc). Ayako Hamada has been one of the sharpest wrestlers in the world for years and her picking apart Hashimoto with kicks looked great.
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I also watched a fun Dradtion opening tag - Super Tiger & Sanshu Tsubakichi vs. Ryuta Hasumi & Nobuyuki Kurashima (4/20). Kurashima has been an opening match guy for 20 years and he is an underrated dude. He will always do something cool like bust out a nice judo throw or look in a nasty hold. He also has a mustache now so he looks like 60s-70s era JWA midcarder and he hit some nice european uppercuts and back elbows too. Some cool matwork, stiff shots especially from Tsubakichi, young guy Hasumi looking fine and Super Tiger 2 getting the most out of his miserable self hitting a nice kick combo and cool Octopus Hold variation for the finish.
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Wrestlers with largest timespan between 2 great matches
Jetlag replied to Jetlag's topic in Pro Wrestling
Aja Kong -- 27 years tag with Grizzly Iwamoto, Nakano and Bison Kimura in 1990 vs Chihiro Hashimoto (2017) Two others who are approaching that level: Meiko Satomura -- 22 years vs. Toshiyo Yamada (1996) vs. Io Shirai (2018) Ayako Hamada -- 20 years vs. Mariko Yoshida (1998) vs. Chihiro Hashimoto (2018) -
Wrestlers with largest timespan between 2 great matches
Jetlag replied to Jetlag's topic in Pro Wrestling
The Fargo match is just a clip though, right? And yeah I forgot about that tag with the exoticos. That was a riot indeed. -
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[1998-01-14-Michinoku Pro] Mens Teoh vs Shoichi Funaki
Jetlag replied to Loss's topic in January 1998
Yeah - technical wrestling! BORING! Honestly, I thought this was a terrific match. They whip out a bunch of cool western style matwork and it's awesome. Teioh lost his calling as a studio TV worker - he looked up THERE, working cobra clutches and dropping the elbow on the joint. I honestly think with better/more straightened out limb selling his would have a serious shot at junior MOTY. Souhern scientific matwork, shootstyle leglocks, funky lucha submissions, it's all here, and they worked it all really tight. They did a great job drawing the crowd into what was ultimately a long match between two guys who are not the biggest stars on the roster. I thought the Shawn Capture stuff was a little overdone, but hey, that stuff was HOT in 1998. I dug all the tricked out reversals - especially Teioh spinning out of the Sharpshooter attempt. The finisher reversal stuff worked too, as they basically had the best possible US indy match - 10 years ahead. Rollups looked ultra tight and actually ended up meaning something. Yeah so what, I enjoyed this. -
Who has a claim to have had great matches in 2 years the furthest apart? Examples Terry Funk -- 35 years vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (1976) vs. Jerry Lawler (2011) Johnny Saint -- 35 years vs. Jim Breaks (1973) vs. Mike Quackenbush (2008) Yoshiaki Fujiwara -- 33 years vs. Super Tiger (1984) vs. Shinya Aoki (2017) Jerry Lawler -- 30 years vs. Terry Funk (1981) vs. The Miz (2011) Negro Casas -- 29 years vs. Fuerza Guerrera (1986) vs. Dragon Lee (2015) Antonio Inoki -- 27 years vs. Chris Markoff (1969) vs. Vader (1996) Hijo del Santo -- 26 years vs. Espanto Jr. (1986) w Villano IV vs. Hijo del Solitario & Angel Blanco Jr (2012) Verne Gagne -- 24 years vs. Billy Goelz (1950) vs. Billy Robinson (1974)
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Baba's 60th birthday. This is all about Old Man Baba Does All Kinds of Improbable Things. Including: blocking chops with his matchstick arms! Technical wrestling! Test of strengths with Kobashi! The crowd is hot for all things involving Baba, while the rest of the match was somewhat dry. I guess there's no reason to bring the workrate when you are there to make your geriatric boss look good. Mossman got smacked and stretched good, and Misawa did almost KO Kawada with an elbow, but nothing ever amounted to much. There was also plenty of „take punishment, then no sell back to offense“. Fuchi hits the Greatest Fistdrop at one point, but it's all lost in a stream of things happening. It's kind of cool these guys can go 30 minutes with corpselike Baba and have a match that never drags, but I was hoping for something a little less mindless.
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Man, 1998 was truely the year of GOOD MATWORK. Felino is an ultra talented dude who gets overlooked because he is mainly in the ring with overshadowing all time greats, but once you stop ogling the Hijo del Santos and Negro Casases around him and focus on him you notice he is a top notch wrestler of his own. Felino was just a beast on the mat here. A CMLL title match is bound to be technical and have some matwork, but I didn't expect him to grind Karloff down like he did here. Working full mount and nasty half nelsons. I guess with a guy like Karloff Lagarde Jr. you can't really do the same complex and beautiful sequences you normally would, so Felino decided to just do a bunch of real grappling with minimum cooperation required. Karloff seemingly accidentally catches a cool leglock and does the neat thing where he steps on Felino's foot, so for a moment I thought the dude may be talented, but then he started goofing around and not knowing what to do when Felino went to par terre and expected him to work some amateur moves of his own. It almost seemed like a bit of a rib to expose the poor geek, and the finishes to the 2nd and 3rd fall weren't anything that gets the blood pumping. Still Felino was up there with the Mile Zrnos and Mariko Yoshidas as far as kickass matworkers of 1998 go. I wonder what was being said after the match.
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Yeah, I'm pimping a Hirota match now. What are you gonna do about it? This was a cool sprint that WORKED and told a STORY due to Hirota being Hirota. This was before she was a total clown act, so she actually tried to be competitive with Meiko by rushing her with hip attacks and rollups, and Meiko putting her in place with arm-snapping flash submissions and general viciousness. Hirota's Hip Attacks work because she has a variety of them – hip attack to the shoulder, hip attacke to the side of the head, avalanche hip attack etc. Match a few neat moments (including Hirota reversing the armbreaker in a great sequence) and Hirota's partial sloppiness actually added to the match. Also, badass finish where Hirota keeps blocking Satomura's finisher so Satomura does like a modified judo throw into her DVB. Never seen that anywhere.
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Uhh actually this thread was s'posed to be about his general take on pro wrestling and not a JBP & buzzwords general. Personally I know too little about him to judge how morally good or bad he is, but measuring someone by the worst of his fans is not very nice. You wouldn't like it if someone did that to pro wrestling either, let alone some of history's greatest thinkers. Nietzsche, Heidegger and so on, they've all had some jerks for a fanbase. (Not that I'm defending Heidegger. Fuck his incomprehensible hogwash). I actually found it interesting that he mentioned Bret Hart was maybe at some point the most famous canadian in the world. And a hero to 120 million people. How does that work, global babyface appeal, despite cultural difference and all? Let's not even begin with John Cena. Kids everywhere love that guy no matter where on the globe. Hell, we all find guys we like and root for all the time, no matter how far back in time or on the globe we go. Seems that he's just a mark for Stu.
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Well, you've had a good run, you whacky mysterious person. I'm amazed it lasted this long. In honor of our fallen comrade, I will use the But How Does He Compare to Volk Han?-meter as a measuring stick for pro wrestlers from now on.
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Heavily BattlARTS inspired girl wrestling with plenty of brutal kicks, suplexes and flash submissions to entertain you. Yamada looked excellent and her exchanges with Satomura were probably some of the most violent of the year. Kato does not sell on the level of the other women and there were some weak moments, but nothing to detract from the bout in a major way. There was also some fun games around the young girls refusing to tag out which would or would not backfire on them. KAORU held up her end and the finishing run between Satomura & Kato was loaded with cool exciting counters.
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Or does he? I think this Kermit the frog sounding geek is kind of an old weirdo but watching him mark out for Stu Hart's grappling is hilarious. Maybe we should invite him over here? Send him a playlist of Fujiwara/Inoki matches? Get him on a podcast with Parv?
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Really good tag action which was basically built around 2 dynamics. First, you had Satomura & Kato trying to chop down Yamada, who would cut them off with vicious kicks and suplexes. Yamada looked adorably like a middle aged mother in 1998, but still had some of the most brutal offense around. The sections with Kaoru were centered around her just getting smothered while Yamada would run in to save her by kicking people in the face like a BattlARTS tag. Some really cool spots built around a Sleeper Hold amongst other things. Match had focus and did not overstay it's welcome while delivering plenty of high end offense, which is what you want from joshi.
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Eh, remember when shootstyle was fucking great? Kanehara brings a nice unusual to RINGS stiffness to his matches and when he was throwing kicks and knees he was walloping Illioukhine. He was also veteran enough to be competitive on the mat with the russian. Illiokhine's holds were absolutely clinical. Finish wasn't amazing, but solid enough and everything else here was a highly enjoyable grappler vs. Striker matchup.
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Greatest Wrestling Promotion of all time?
Jetlag replied to Microstatistics's topic in Pro Wrestling
It's funny to see WWE, CMLL, NJPW and AJPW get mentioned so much when these promotions have produced so much skippable content. I guess, if you want to only look at peak material... If you go by peak output vs. average output CMLL wouldn't look good at all. Not to mention that if people were to nitpick every stupid booking decision or bad match CMLL has done the way they do with a promotion like TNA. The 2000-2010 period is pretty much a big void for the company too. The most consistant wrestling I've watched is probably the Houston/Mid South stuff that we had on NWA Classics and the 80s set. As far as promotions go where I want to watch every single event they've run, U-Style is at the top followed by Futen and BattlARTS. -
So, since I always wanted to ask this... is it true Giant Baba was considered really handsome back in the day?
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Leave it to a bunch of sleazy dudes and old geezers to have one of the funnest bomb throwing sprints of the year. You know any match with Tarzan Goto & Ryuma Go in it is pure money. If you don't, I hereby decree it. I was expecting a wild brawl, but they mostly stay in the ring and stick to the all star team of Tarzan/Go/Kabuki waffling the shit out of the sleaze greenhorns. Matsuda & Okumura aren't all that great, but that DOES NOT MATTER because they were here to get punched in the face and kicked in the throat a whole LOT. The exchanges between Goto & Yamada were insanely gory and easily the highlight of the match. I also unexpectedly loved Kabuki, who is supposed to be way over the hill and corpse-like at this pound but still BRINGS it - by doing what he always did: throwing punches and thrust kicking dudes really hard. I can't believe people widely don't like this dude - even his nerve hold was awesome! He was KILLING the poor guy with that nerve hold. I imagine if this had a grand stand exchange between Goto & Yamada at the end or something this would have been near all time level, but as it stands it was basically 3 badass vets waltzing in to kick the shit out of anyone and it kind of ruled. Also, do not watch this match if you dislike lariats, because this had about 30 of em.
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Really good match which leaves you with a few realisations: 1. these two kids were insanely talented to have a random indy sleaze undercard match this good 2. damn, that's actually Fugofugo Yumeji and some dork from Dragon Gate before he went to Dragon Gate? 3. These two totally could have and should have been the Yuki Ishikawa and Daisuke Ikeda of sleazy King's Road style, but it just ended up not happening. AAAAAHHHHH it's maddening!! All that squandered potential!!! It's even worse than watching the kids in GAEA!! But, atleast I can watch this match and fantasy book an ideal fed centered around these guy propagating their own vision of brutal & intricate junior wrestling. This match is a lot like two NOAH heavies having a really fun undercard bombfest. It's not flawless, but the potential for this to grow into something beautiful was there. Fujisaki has the cool wrist clutch suplexes and submissions and Saito brings the stiff spin kicks and hurty looking junior offense. The build to the finish was especially cool as it was like a mix of an AJPW "super finisher" and NJPW "You keep blocking this move, so I will use that to set up another move" moment.
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All that is right with pro wrestling. This was kept short and to the point – Porky absorbing punishment and thus garnering love from the audience in a way many younger, fitter, better looking wrestlers couldn't dream of doing, Gran Markus Jr. kicking ass, seconds getting involved in fun ways, multiple awesome fat guy dives and a triumphant finish, Porky avenging his brother. People have said CMLL has cooled off in 1998 compared to the insane years before, but I'm glad after all the high end wrestlers getting to shine we got this little feud to showcase Brazo de Plata, a wrestling god in his own right.
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Just an awesome tubby guy fight & insane car crash sprint. They LAY INTO eachother and less than 30 seconds into the match Tenryu has kicked Araya in the nose! They do a bunch of ECW spots and bring weapons into it except this feels like a fight because these guys are mauling eachother something fierce and not making this overly cooperative. The big guy dives fucking rule because they feel so reckless – Araya almost compressing Tenryu's spine „I don't give a damn if you are in position or not“, and Tenryu later trying to climb the turnbuckle, but then going „Ah, I haven't thought this through – fuck it, I'll just do a forward roll“ and he nukes Araya. Araya grabs a kendo stick and goes MAD waffling the shit out of Tenryu and breaking the stick to stab him further. Araya argueing with the ref works because with all that has gone down you buy into the possibility that he might just beat the shit out of him too. Araya goes for one dive too many and gets wasted by flying chairs. It's such a perfect barfight move – you see a fat mulleted japanese guy getting ready to jump you, you start throwing chairs. By the end punches & kicks with serious contempt have been thrown, both guys bleeding from multiple places and just stubbornly ramming into eachother with stiff old lariats like bulls. Ehh ain't exactly Baba/Destroyer, but you know what you're getting from this. Wrestle and Romance.
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Dan Severn did both. Didn't he come out with both the UFC and NWA title at one point?
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Brief match in which Frye makes Fujiwara look like a huge threat. Frye sold really well and I would have liked to see him working longer singles matches. Worth checking out to see Fujiwara and Frye trading punches.