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dawho5

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Everything posted by dawho5

  1. dawho5
    This was a little disappointing. Shiozaki is great when he's in there with Nakajima, but once he's across from Sasaki he forgets how to sell 90% of the time and gets in a long Kobashi-esque pissing contest. KENTA tends to get way too prideful against Sasaki as well. Why Sasaki was willing to give up as much as he did to KENTA I'm not sure. Finish isn't completely overdone, but goes longer than it ought to. I'm starting to see where 2010 and beyond would be a hard thing to watch.
  2. dawho5
    Fun spotfest. Not getting a vote, but I do like seeing how the juniors style evolved after the 90s. Lots of really athletic stuff, some very nice fake/partner attacks, non-stop action. It's more of a guilty pleasure than a MOTY or MOTD though.
  3. dawho5
    The finish wasn't too overdone and the work wasn't bad. Sasuke brings the ridiculous dives and crash-and-burns. It didn't impress me overmuch, but Sasuke's attempts to kill himself always come out entertaining.
  4. dawho5
    Disturbing in what way? I can see the level of violence involved being too much for somebody. Them just punching each other in the face for 18 minutes had me wondering how they were doing that and still putting that much energy into things. Having taken more than a few punches to the face in a sparring setting over the course of about 90 minutes, I can tell you that it wears you down really fast.
  5. dawho5
    First 20-25 minutes had so much promise. KENTA gets the best of the early going, but you can see that it's a war of attrition that he's going to eventualy lose. And he does, with Akiyama bringing his great, focused offense and KENTA playing an excellent face-in-peril. KENTA's comebacks are short and bursty, with Akiyama continually going back to the neck to being us to the finishing sequence. First part is great, with KENTA having to fight through Akiyama's lower end big offense to hit his own. Crowd isn't buying into KENTA's chances at this point, but there isn't any reason they should. Akiyama hits a super nasty backdrop off the top that KENTA kicks out of to...claps. I think that's the sign that you've conditioned your fans to look for way too many big nearfalls. More Akiyama nearfalls past the point of reason, then we get to the big KENTA teases, which work well enough, and finally the Akiyama lead-up to the sternness dust thingamabob. This match will probably get a vote for how great the first part was. I just wish NOAH hadn't been so obver the top with their finishes for so many years that it became necessary to tack them on to matches like this.
  6. dawho5
    Here's something I never would have guessed. Tanahashi is one of the more consistent wrestlers in the late 2000s as far as cranking out good matches and good performances. They stick to the Tanahashi formula, which is more than a little odd given Tanahashi is the face here. Tanahashi is at a clear disadvantage power wise, but he catches the bigger guy getting into the ring and starts working over the leg. Nakanishi doesn't sell the leg near enough as the match progresses. Everything else is solid though. Tanahashi gets beaten down by the power of Nakanishi, has to go back to the leg. Nakanishi gets in a few big man agility spots. Finishing run is well-done as they don't go too big on the nearfalls, work is done in between, it makes sense with the erst of the match and it ends when it should. This probably gets a vote.
  7. dawho5
    This match went about as well as it could. This was the Shiozaki show and I was loving it. Opening leads to Sasaki and Morishima getting heat on Shiozaki. Problem with having Sasaki team with Morishima is that when they do the same things it's easy to see how much better Sasaki does them than Morishima despite being smaller. The eventual comeback happens and Misawa helps where it is needed but mostly lets Shiozaki do the work. Shiozaki's strikes late leave something to be desired. Morishima's late match offense is big as always. Finish is well-worked, only a few non-breakup kickouts of big moves. Shiozaki is really, really big in this match. This probably makes my bottom quarter.
  8. dawho5
    Match seemed designed to put Okada over in the standard Japanese fashion of dealing with youngsters. I drifted off a bit whenever Sugiura was in the ring, which has become a habit. He's just so one-dimensional, even if he is good at that dimension. Goto is worse because he's not as good at it. Okada was clearly still learning here, but he tries to put on a spirited performance. Aoki was just sort of...there. If you can't tell, I didn't much care for this match.
  9. dawho5
    Both good and bad stuff here. Nakamura and Milano make for a fun non-standard NOAH match. They work over Shiozaki's leg after the opening stuff, then Nakamura inexplicably stops attacking the leg to let Shiozaki win a strike exchange. The leg is never attacked again, but Shiozaki sells it for a little while to his credit. They work a nice transition into a good finishing run. Nakamura was mostly good, but he's starting to seem a bit like KENTA. No matter how the early match goes, we're doing the finishing sequence with the same big spots and teases. I really don't like that about Japan in the 2000s that the finish always had to have a lot of nearfalls off of big moves, strikes and suplexes without any real thought given to how the first 15-25 minutes of the match went. This was a really well-worked finish, Shiozaki and Milano shine particularly. I'd call Milano MVP of the match for the way he kept interjecting his chickenshit heel act into the macho pissing contest-fueled NOAH matches.
  10. dawho5
    This was better than I thought it would be. They do some athletic opening stuff, then Ibushi gets caught by a dropkick to the leg on a dive attempt and Ishimori takes advantage. I like Ishimori's working over the leg, and Ibushi sold well between moves all the way til the end. But Ibushi's comebacks were often very sprinty or flippy to the point where you could see the leg not being sold during. It's a small complaint, but it happens often enough that it works against the match. Ishimori skips a lot of his overly long setup offense late, which ehlps. Nearfalls go a little too far in the kickouts, but it's not near as much as most 2000s stuff. Also, pretty well laid out. It's not getting a vote, but it was a fun watch and worth it. Both are good at the intricate athletic sequences that border on gymnastics, but they keep that to a minimum, which to me makes the best use of those kinds of sequences.
  11. dawho5
    I would agree with Matt that at a certain point it became very easy to read about the booking/backstage aspects of pro wrestling. It had a lot to do with message boards moreso than newsletters I'd guess. Places like DVDVR and their competitors. I don't think fans were "dumb" before this happened, just not as many had the easy access to the kind of information that would make someone what we would now call a "smart" fan. I guess my questions would be a bit more pointed towards the different audiences and what percentage of fans within them were the type who read the stuff on the internet and discussed booking, match layout, etc. What percentage for WWE? How about for RoH? What about New Japan? Would those numbers have changed from the mid-90s until now? Would it always be in the direction towards more "smart" fans? How many of those fans who use the internet really get involved in the types of discussions that go on here daily? What reasons did you have specifically for the direction you took once you started getting into wrestling? Did that keep going in the same direction once you joined any one of the internet wrestling discussion boards? If it changed, why? Can the answers to these questions apply to a lot of other fans or are you very likely in the minority? edit: I think there's a few questions I missed. What communities did you join as far as discussing wrestling? Did you enjoy them or take anything from them? What did you not like about them? How did that affect what discussion boards you joined after that? These probably have quite a lot of bearing on how you look at the subject at hand as much as they helped form who we all are as wrestling fans.
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  13. dawho5
    I have been trying to think of a response to this line of argument for a while that encapsulates how I look at this. Hoping this works. On the one hand, I think that yes, the internet has changed the way some fans look at pro wrestling. For my it goes back to the "why" part of jdw's argument. That is the part that the internet really opens up to younger fans now with much less personal experience necessary to see it. On the other hand, I've been to live MMA events that my friends were taking part in. The majority of the people who went to them seemed to want to drink, be really loud and get excited when somebody started getting the shit beaten out of them. Who it was didn't matter very often. I've got to guess that a certain cross section of those people would gladly go to a WWE or indy show and watch people "fake" beat each other up and yell and scream while drinking to blow off steam. And you know, that plays into the way the faces are always rejecting authority (the boss?) and sticking it to the man. It gets to the more casual audience in a big way because of what those people would like to do given the chance. My feeling about this whole argument is that we're really talking about a matter of the ratio of "smart" fans who read the internet and talk about booking to people who just show up to yell and scream and chant, just for the entertainment of it. I would guess that has changed, but to what degree I really have no idea.
  14. dawho5
    I thought this had it's moments. Oba's comedy stuff was too over the top for me. Ono was great as a dick heel. Seeing Ikeda in the Ishikawa role was weird but it worked. Not as well for me, but it did work. And I got the feeling that Suruga was a protégé of Ikeda and the point of the match was to put him and to a lesser extent Oba over. Ikeda wrestlng almost face makes this a little odd as far as structure. Towards the end, Ikeda really gives Suruga a lot, but comes up with the right move at the right time for a victory.
  15. dawho5
    Finishing sequence was really well-done. Good work between the falls, they paid off on three things that happened in the match 2 weeks earlier, and it didn't last forever with way too many nearfalls. Only problem is that Nakajima chose to work the leg early and throughout. And if I've learned anything about KENTA in my 2000-2009 watchings, it's that he wrestles one way regardless of the circumstance. So even after legwork, let's sprint across the ring three times in quick succession and then use a springboard move with no slowdown. What a waste of a perfectly good finish. edit: For clarity, I'm gonna lay out my reasons for not liking this. Opening is good, lots of kicks and rope-running like you'd expect. Then Nakajima works the leg over and KENTA sticks to the original gameplan. Nakajima sort of comes back to that, but also works the leg over some more. At this point, they aren't wrestling the same match. Then finish starts and they sync up to put together a really good one. If I'm putting this together, I tell Nakajima to just run around and trade kicks/elbows/high flying with KENTA for the first 15. That goes perfectly well into the finish they did. Much better than the actual first 15 minutes of the match.
  16. dawho5
    I would agree on everything said about Akiyama. He just never had his own big rival to make his place special. Both Misawa and Kobashi had Kawada there to really push them hard to (in Misawa's case) never let up despite being on top or (for Kobashi) keep doing more and more to get the fans on his side. Overrated I would go with Kobashi, for many reason I feel no need to repeat. Underrated, I'm gonna go a little off the beaten path and say Katsuyori Shibata. The guy brings a completely different dynamic to every match I've seen him in and tends to get the other workers involved fired up one way or another. He's probably not a great worker, but what he brings to the table has made my limited viewings of him entertaining.
  17. dawho5
    This could have been really good. Nakamura's continued selling of the leg for 3 seconds into his offense pretty bogus given the focus on it. Nearfall sequence was just a little overdone on what was kicked out on, but it seemed really tame compared to most. Tanahashi hit the best sling blade I've seen countering a landslide. It's not overlong, right around 25 minutes, which goes hand-in-hand with the finishing stretch not having lots of laying around and useless strike exchanges just so it could be an epic match. Early stuff was really nice, had a good Misawa vs. Kawada feel to it in the rope-running and teasing of big spots early. Too bad that didn't last.
  18. dawho5
    So many things I'm not sure of here. Why is Misawa vs. Nakamura a big deal? Why Sugiura? Can Hirooki Goto throw an elbow that looks like it hurts? Sugiura gets old pretty fast whenever I see him wrestle. Too many pissing contests to "build the match". Same few power spots, sometimes done later to be reversed. Then when he does do things besides that, it makes no sense. He grabs an ankle lock on Nakamura after nobody has touched a leg and they spend a few minutes making it into a big spot. Did I miss parts of this match or something? Nakamura gets put over really well. And he looks good for the most part. Misawa has stretches where he looks old and worn out. And damn, how many years did he wrestle with no major breaks? I'd say that's deserved and not in any way complaint-worthy material. Misawa still wrestling in 2009 had to take a superhuman effort. Goto gets his weak strikes and a few suplexes, but is mostly an afterthought. Nakamura catches Sugiura with a flash armbar and gets the submission in 3 seconds. I get that it can do that, but that was a weird finish. Oddball match, not awful, but not getting a vote.
  19. dawho5
    I remember watching this. but I guess I never posted anything. 4-way is better as spotfests go. Honestly I never look at Toryumon or DG as something I need a coherent story to enjoy the match. It's not like NOAH where it's supposed to be a big, serious wrestling company. But then, I don't rate Toryumon very high when it does get a vote, so there are drawbacks to that as well.
  20. dawho5
    And Regal lived up to the in-ring requirements for sure.
  21. dawho5
    Anyone using Skynyrd as their entrance music rules, period. I think that goes for any of the old blues music I've heard as entrance music as well.
  22. dawho5
    I learned a long time ago to stay away from Japanese deathmatches. Some things just are not for me, and that's one of them.
  23. dawho5
    I didn't think this was as good as the tag on the same night. But it was still up there as far as the whole of the 2000s go. Yano is a clear underdog here, but he holds his own on the mat. Usuda starts in with strikes just to drive the point home that he doesn't have to play Yano's game and takes a big lead. Yano manages to get it back to the mat and then does some pro wrestling style striking to get his own standing ten count on Usuda. Once Usuda gets over the shock of that he starts taking Yano apart with kicks. Vicious kicks. Please don't let that ever happen to me kicks. Can Yano capitalize on the damage to Usuda's arms before the kicks take their toll? Finish is....well, it looks like something to avoid anyway.
  24. dawho5
    These guys definitely did a lot of things right. The rib work by Yoshitsune was exceptional early. Hayato's comeback was really well-done. They work this incredible apron sequence where Yoshitsune backflips out of a German and lands perfectly on the apron. That is some fucking precision right there. Then they do some ECW stuff, which is okay. Then they work a 18 minute finishing run that goes way too far over the top. Don't get me wrong, lots of it was really impressive stuff, but these long sequences of false finishes just for the point of having them have gotten more out of control as the decade wears on. Dial it back about ten minutes and get a few good nearfalls each and I would have voted for it.
  25. dawho5
    The teacher/student relationship between Ishikawa and Sawa comes through pretty strong in this one. It was sorta there in the last two matches they were both involved in, but this one cements it. Great tag match, with Sawa playing the face-in-peril really well before Ishikawa has to try and make up all the lost ground. It's like a Battlarts version of the Misawa/Akiyama or Kobashi tags. Only there's more. Ishikawa beat Tiger in a match just about a month earlier and it seems like Sawa and Hara have a rivalry. If you pay attention to how the match is built, you get the idea that the finish from last match isn't happening here. And it doesn't, but it's still damn good. I'd say it's better than the lead-in singles bout by a ways. This will be around the 30-40 range.
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