JAC

It's amazing that Vince can turn chicken sh%t into chicken salad and people lose their minds praising his genius, when he had wagyu beef sitting next to the chicken coop. The MITB cash-in was a nice recovery--the crowd popped, everyone was surprised--but the damage was already done. Reigns v. Brock was a fun match alright. An extended squash, but with Reigns doing damage to Brock along the way and slowly wearing him down, getting ready to culminate in Reigns having that extra little bit left in the tank to do what Cena couldn't and pull off a miracle comeback. Except that the fans in attendance still crapped all over when he mounted his comeback. Reigns was made to look sympathetic, but the fans in attendance booed him mercilessly when he fought back. Presumably, they see him as Super Cena Part II. Now, somebody will probably say that Cena gets mixed reactions but is still the top draw. But the mixed reaction is an indictment of how Cena was handled by creative. Wouldn't he have drawn a lot more money without the mixed reactions? Wouldn't Reigns look a lot better as a badass babyface rather than Cena Mk II? So at the end of the day, Reigns is still damaged because he has the stink of "anointed corporate champion", no matter how hard he worked last night. Meanwhile, even if there's a consensus that wins and losses matter, it doesn't appear as though how those wins and losses come matters, as everyone seems to love the MITB cash-in. Since winning MITB, who has Rollins beat? Dean Ambrose and... oh, that's it. We've gone from Brock Lesnar to a guy who's scarcely been booked stronger than Mikey Whipwreck. So Reigns is damaged, Rollins is a weak champ and Lesnar's going back to his compound for God knows how many months. I'm still not seeing how any of this is better than giving Bryan the big win over Lesnar and letting his story play out, thus giving Reigns a year to get over organically and be ready for the big push next year. Sorry, that whole main event left me cold. I'm not drinking the Kool Aid on this one. Just because it didn't end with poor Roman Reigns getting pelted with garbage, it doesn't mean it was booking genius. It was a salvage job; nothing more.

Wins and losses matter immensely. It's true that there are times when someone gets over in a losing effort, perhaps even moreso that he would have in a winning effort. See Bret v. Austin at WrestleMaina 13. But these matches are the exception to the rule, and usually involve good booking and exceptional performances. If you throw guys out there and treat the question of who wins and who loses as being inconsequential, it's going to be hard for anyone to get over. A wrestling match is a competition, even if only in the kayfabe sense. It's not a figure skating exhibition. If winning and losing doesn't matter, why bother having a wrestling match? For the record, I listened to the WrestleMania 31 preview podcast that was the apparent inspiration for this thread. I uttered an expletive when I heard Sitterson say that. It's one of those ridiculous company lines that probably gets drilled into WWE employees' heads, not unlike referring to the fans as the 'WWE Universe' and pro wrestling as 'sports entertainment'. Utter crap.

Johnny Five is alive! Well, I did hear that a re-make is in the works. Maybe a pro wrestling tie-in like Capital Combat: The Return of Robocop is in order.

There's a moment in this match when Misawa has Jumbo in a... what to call it? It's not a double chickenwing. But he has Jumbo's arms pulled straight back and is controling him. Jumbo tries to reverse the hold. Jumbo takes a moment and gives a mighty heave. The intention is that Tsuruta halfway succeed in reversing the hold before Misawa can muster his strength and push back. In practice, Misawa loses his grip entirely, but Tsuruta still pauses halfway through the reversal and allows Misawa to regain his grip. See here (I'm too clueless to figure out how to embed this, notwithstanding twenty attempts to do so!): http://youtu.be/0ztnhHbL20U?t=8m55s As much as I enjoy this match, that little moment in the middle completely takes me out of the moment. It's maybe one of the most glaring botches I can ever recall seeing in a match of this stature. Tsuruta should have played it as him having broken the hold entirely. I've always been surprised to have never seen anybody commenting on that. The other strange thing occurs during the ending of the match (at about 27:24 on the video above). After Misawa reverses Jumbo's final pin attempt, Tsuruta has his right arm around Misawa's neck and appears to be holding Misawa down. It almost seems as though Misawa didn't know that he was going to win and Tsuruta forced him to stay in the pinning position. I always found this a bit curious. Then again, Misawa keeps Jumbo's leg hooked throughout, so it seems like I'm reading too much into Tsuruta's arm position. While I do love this match as a passing-of-the-torch moment, I've always thought it to be a bit quirky. The 9/1/1990 rematch is the better wrrestling match, even if the story that it tells is not quite as captivating.

They were pretty noisy, I'll grant you that. I really don't understand how those kind of noises can come naturally out of a person--maybe Chono has a breathing problem and needs to borrow some of Kojima's breath-right strips.

I'm glad to see this match is getting some love. I bought the commercial tape off of eBay over a decade ago. I never heard this match talked up much, and kind of assumed that most people probably had never seen it in full. I think the most notable thing about the match is that, whereas so many matches seem to have throw away work-the-limb sections that lead to nothing, the time Hase spends working over both Chono's neck AND his leg proves to be fruitful and ties in with the finish. The victory comes across to me as triumph of Hase's ability to effectively take advantage of multiple weaknesses in the opponent that, taken individually, might not have been enough to allow Hase to put him away, but targeted concurrently with the STF variation, were too much for Chono to overcome.

While previous posters have commented on Misawa heeling it up, I though Tsuruta and Taue (particularly Tsuruta) seemed like they were heeling it up more. Whenever Taue was in trouble, Tsuruta would slyly begin to enter the ring--slowly at first so as to not attract the referee's attention, then moving to full speed once he had manoeuvered his body through the ropes--measure up whoever had Taue in a compromising position and then drill him with a hard closed fist. Jumbo seemed to really relish in the crowd's booing of his interference. Tsuruta and Taue's attempts at interference when not the legal man in the ring also led to two nice comeuppance spots: first, Kobashi's lariat on Tsuruta knocking him right back out of the ring when Tsuruta tried to break up Kobashi's Texas cloverleaf on Taue; later, Misawa drilling Taue with an elbow when Taue tries to break up Misawa's facelock on Tsuruta. The match kept up a nice pace throughout, really picking up when Jumbo (illegally interfering again) drills Misawa hard to stop him from nailing the tiger driver on Taue. Taue immediately follows up with a great looking lariat. The closing sequence is great. I watched this match not long after watching the Misawa/Kawada v. Gordy/Williams match from 2/26/91, so when Misawa got knocked off the apron into the railing, I though for sure that Kobashi would be going it alone for a couple of minutes before eating the fall. Misawa's return to save Kobashi was a nifty surprise, leading to a nice little back and forth between Taue and Kobashi before Taue puts him away. Again, as commented on earlier by other posters, this match was about letting Kobashi and Taue take the spotlight. I think Jumbo was a little better in the supporting role than Misawa. Misawa seemed content to just spend less time in the ring, letting Kobashi do more. Jumbo, in contrast, seemed to do more to help out Taue early on, but let Taue take over after the thwarted tigerdriver --> lariat spot. From here on, Taue seemed to take ownership of winning the match for his team and being something more than just Tsuruta's junior, along for the ride. This match is a bit of a forgotten classic, although having received a commercial release a few years back on the second Misawa Box Set, it will likely reach more people in the years to come. That's a good thing.

I'm James, 34 years old, from Halifax, Nova Scotia. I've been lurking for a few years, and figured that I ought to finally contribute something. I started watching wrestling on a regular basis around the beginning of 1989, after my dad received "press passes" (i.e., standing room only passes) to a WWF house show headlined by Randy Savage v. The Ultimate Warrior. I got into wrestling in a big way, watching WWF religiously for a few years, and watching WCW whenever I could find it on TV (it was not on as consistently as the WWF). I even got some exposure to Japan through some VHS rentals (The World Pro Wrestling from Japan tape with commentary by Gordon Solie, and the two poorly done AJW dubs, Riot of the Rising Sun and the dubiously named Slant Eyed Slaughter). After my interest waned by 1993, bounced back from 1996-1999, then waned again when I began to realize that the matches had become unsatisfying to watch. It was then that, having recalled that the little bit of Japanese wrestling that I had seen had been decent, I decide to buy some tapes and see what it was all about. I ended up enjoying some Joshi and becoming a big fan of All Japan. In particular, I've really enjoyed the mid-70's stuff I've seen and the late 80's to mid 90's All Japan. I've also dabbled in a bit of shootstyle from the UWF/UWFI and some 90's New Japan--moreso the heavies than the juniors. School and work limited my time for wrestling during much of the past decade, and I didn't care much for the WWE during the aughts, but I've been enjoying a decent amount of WWE (with the aid of a DVR to fast-forward through the mountains of crap) for the last two years or so. I've also been revisiting the old puroresu and enjoying that tremendously.