GOTNW

"I miss the old PWO, back when jdw talked about whom he liked to jack off to" he says as he takes the cheap count-out. As long as it looks good how they get there is up to the workers. Besides having stiff and/or good looking strikes isn't nearly as important as knowing how ot use them anyway.

Parv has turned into a charicature of himself more than anyone shitposting on twitter at this point. Hivemind hivemind hivemind hivemind hivemind hivemind hivemind hivemind. You must like what we like otherwise your opinion is shit is precisely the kind of bullshit that's everything wrong with this. You're no better than Meltzer dudebro parrots that troll anyone who doesn't agree with their high sparrow into oblivion. The orthodox view is that Shawn Michaels is the greatest wrestler of all time. If you want to see the orthodox view on wrestling you conduct a poll at wrestlingforum or reddit. Some of us are more interested in diving into wrestling a little deeper, but I guess it's much easier to say "I don't understand this" and convert that opinion to "this is shit and not nearly as the stuff I grew up on or those Ted Dibiase matches that happened when I was two". That's basically your stance anyway. You hate wrestling before your time and wrestling after your time.

Why is it so unsurprising some prefer a world where hivemind rules and nothing interesting is ever discussed. There isn't going to be a consensus on ANYTHING if enough people watch it and share their thoughts on it. That there are still so many sacred cows in wrestling shows just how far wrestling criticism is from being taken seriously.

It's almost like people forget Cro Cop weights like five Conors.

https://twitter.com/WWERomanReigns/status/762301317939245057 More takes: https://twitter.com/riddletuf7/status/762348724999905281 https://twitter.com/RusevBUL/status/762342235358662656

I think Choshu is a pretty great matworker, this might not be *the* match to showcase, more of a mat-heavy match that showcases why Choshu was so great in general. I loved how Bockwinkel stepped on Choshu's left leg while holding his right, that's the kind of neat detail work you want to see from him. Choshu's repetead counters to Bockwinkel's takedown attempts were awesome, completely shutting down an opponent's attempts at offence is something I love but you rarely see in wrestling. Bockwinkel countered Choshu's Scorpion Deathlocks by pulling his hair and using everything he could, Choshu countered Bockwinkel's Figure Four by chopping away at him and pushing him off, it was good stuff and the shots we got were all good looking, both Bockwinkel's knees and Choshu's chops looked vicious. The build to the Lariat is great but unfortunately it is followed by the ~cheap 80s finish~ (I don't mind that the finish wasn't clean but that it was lazily done and didn't add to the match). At least the post-match brawling was fun. ***1/2

I wasn't expecting this one to actually GROW on me on a rewatch since I thought it was pretty great the first time I saw it but here we are. Fujiwara jumps Choshu at the bell and dominates the opening with neat punches and headbutts. What really stands out is how much Choshu protecting his image of a badass adds to the match-he's always looking for a way, either with body blows or kicks. Fujiwara dismisses Choshu's comeback attempts initially but quickly resorts to choking once he realises he is in serious peril. And Choshu doesn't let Fujiwara just choke the life out of him either-he grabs Fujiwara by the face, to which Fujiwara reacts by grabbing that arm and Armbaring Choshu. It is a reactionary match. When Fujiwara spends too much time untying the corner post Choshu goes after him and Fujiwara knocks him down. When Choshu tries to counter the Wakigatame Fujiwara changes it into another armlock. The first Wakigatame counter was brilliant-Choshu went for a big move too early and got dropped with a "shooty" counter. Similarly Fujiwara's choke was an excellent way to feed Choshu the Backdrop Suplex counter and the move itself looked amazing. Choshu's arm selling was pretty great-it isn't that it was the focus of the match, but not everything has to (or can) be. It doesn't excuse filling time with nothing as a good idea or mean selling that plays a bigger part in how the match turns out is inherently better-in fact often it's just the opposite. Fujiwara's wobbly selling after Choshu bloodies him up is as great as you'd expect it to be and Choshu modifies his Lariats here by just hitting Fujiwara straight in the face with them, absolutely brutal stuff. Choshu stomping Fujiwara after the match was already over was just icing on the cake. ****3/4

This is the stuff right here. Beginning is about what you'd expect from a big Choshu match with these two gauging the distance between them and carefully attacking, awesome lock-ups etc. I'm certain I heard the commentator react to Khan not wearing any paint, which-idk, I don't remember ever seeing Khan wear paint but let's build the narrative on him not wearing paint as he's decided to paint his face with CHOSHU'S BLOOD. Ahem. Match really picks up when Khan starts stomping Choshu in the head-the stomps look really good and are reminiscent of the kind of head stomps you'd see in high end lucha matches, the kind of stuff Santo did during his rudo run. Khan misses a Knee Drop on the floor for the big transition which looks just ungodly brutal. Choshu's reaction to this opportunity if to just thorougly beat Khan's ass with awesome punches, kicks, and of course head stomps because fuck you Killer Khan Riki Choshu is the greatest wrestler of all time. Choshu really makes sure you buy into Khan bleeding here-most guys would just be done after one ringpost shot and get to the bleeding part as soon as possible but Choshu slams Khan's ringpost into the head a couple of more times and hits him with the awesome lucha through the ropes kicks and punches to make sure you really believe Khan should do a blade job for this. And it rules. The big hope spot for Khan comes when he reverses a Choshu Lariat with a big boot-a counter that would be very predictable in say, a modern WWE or New Japan match, but the way All Japan uses rope running moves and irish whips in the 80s is that they have a much bigger chance of working so you buy into the sequence more, plus the actual counter looks great and is timed well. Khan's big nearfalls are some of the most brutal knee drops you'll ever see and his delusional heeling complements them perfectly. Choshu uses the awesome looking Backdrop both as a means of coming back into the match and as a means of wearing down Khan and setting him up for the finish-which included one of best nearfalls I've ever seen, it couldn't have been timed any better. ****1/2

Does Zayn actually do a Leg Lariat? Ryder's finisher is a Leg Lariat. Zayn might do a Calf Kick which looks good only when Kikuchi does it.

Pretty average, Shiro Koshinaka tribute spots aren't what I'd like to see out of Asuka matches, the hip attacks themselves looked fine but her kicks and strikes were awkward as it's evident she's holding back. The Octopus Hold in the ropes was a cool spot and they built an interesting angle around the match hyping the Asuka-Bayley rematch. **1/2

This was perfectly ok though a little too evenly worked for my taste. Maluta is a samoan with bloodties to the business so you know he's gonna end up on the WWE payroll sooner or later. Maluta threw some solid kicks and his back elbow looked good but him ramming Itami into the corner for the transition was a bad Miz tribute spot I didn't buy at all. Itami looked good and more comfortable than better, it's just that the match was too evenly worked for Itami to look like a killer and Maluta wasn't good enough at gathering heat to make Itami look very sympathetic. Fine, a fun watch with some nice shots laid in but nothing memorable. **1/2-**3/4

Lucha Underground has way too many generic PWG wrestlers that made me stop watching it mixed with outright terrible wrestlers thar are way more reminiscent of the Giant Gonzalezes of the world like everyone in the Crew and Mesias' stable. I don't know how anyone sane can think Ryback wouldn't be a huge improvement compared to Cisco, Sinistro de la Muerte and whatever the hell their names are. Then again your reaction was to come back with an ancient and tired talking point thus proving me right once again.

Heavy shots from a guy who hasn't had an original opinion since before I was born.

Indy wrestling lacks bases currently. I'd be excited to see him face some high fliers if I thought any of them were half as good as Kalisto but they're not. He'd be great in Lucha Underground or CMLL though.

Why would a Jumbo or a Mascaras work more than six minutes with this random fat goof? Guy almost killed himself taking stupid bumps, you can hear brain damage any time he opens his mouth and I've had to listen to how he's this master storyteller ever since I started watching wrestling. Is the "it's ok to nearly or actually kill yourself doing stupid stuff if you know how to sell" legacy of Danielson/Misawa/Foley really something to brag about? Not to mention what a tough spot it puts everyone following him, especially when WWE does so much to cannonize those moments while hypocritically talking about how their matches are conducted in a safe environment.

I have no idea why people dedicate so much energy towards hating a third string rudo in Rush brawls but I hope he main events the Aniversario show just to piss off everyone who thinks Volador Jr. is great.

Unless there is a weird tumblr (well there probably is but) I am the #1 Braun Strowman fan. Buddy Rogers cosplayers ruined american wrestling

Watched this with a friend who's seen zero 90s All Japan (only Misawa match he's seen is the 2003 one vs Kobashi and that's because I made him watch it). I was quite interested to see how this would hold up for me and how someone unfamiliar with 90s All Japan like him would react to it (he basically only watches modern wrestling). I had it at ****, he at ****1/4 and we both agreed it's nowhere near the *****/all time classic conventional wisdom says it is. A lot of this stuff is the type of wrestling I watched when I first got into japanese wrestling and the ratings I gave out then aren't nearly as accurate as the ones I give out now since I wasn't nearly as familiar with its tropes as I am now. I liked this match a lot-but philosophically I really don't think it's inherently that better than a type of modern spotfest like Dragon Lee/Kamaitachi. It isn't a terribly creative match. The beginning isn't very interesting-it's not that it's slow, it's that nothing's going on. This doesn't have the awesome stalling and gauging you might see in a Hashimoto match, it's just consciously slow in a way that is neither natural nor pays off in the context of the match like it does in, say, last year's G1 final. It's strengths are the strengths of the 90s All Japan style in general-incredible stiffness, unpredictable sequences that don't have getting your shit in just for the sake of doing so and instead have interesting blocks and counters, smart use of rope running and irish whips, constant struggle etc. But this lacks the type of transcendent performance I was expecting from this type of match. At no point before the finish did I feel like either Misawa or Kawada were in danger of losing. Misaawa's blood year was a great visual but it was more of a "oh yeah....that happened too" moment than it was used as some huge momentum shift or transition. The enthusiastic crowd helped a lot but I can't help but note how disappointed I am how few interesting ideas I come across when revisiting this stuff. Yes-the work is great-but I'm not a tape trader in 1994, I've seen wrestlers stiff each other and do headdrops a million times already. Much like the 1996 RWTL tag how much you like this is a referendum on how much you like All Japan tropes. I'm also not nearly as high on Kawada's selling and acting as I used to be. It was more "I'm trying to make this spot feel big" rather than "I'm great at selling so this spot feels big".

A good match, somewhat disappointing as it's clearly not the best these two could do against each other. Commentary tells us Suzuki intends to rip off Kobashi's right arm before the match. I really liked the opening with Suzuki taunting Kobashi, easily evading his chops and pro-style moves. Kobashi is obviously not going to work a New Japan vs UWFi type of tmatch here so they have to transition into his type of match, which they do but having him counter Suzuki's takedown with a chinlock/headlock. It looked very good, they milked it out well and Kobashi dragging Suzuki into the ring while holding him in a headlock made for a nice touch. The biggest problem for me in the match was that, while there were a lot of great individual moments (like Kobashi trapping Suzuki in the corner and obliterating him with corner chops) Suzuki's control segments left a lot to be desired. Suzuki did a good job of selling the threat and the impact of Kobashi's chops but only showed flashes of what he could do by stretching him. They did a very good job of putting over Kobashi's power with the spot where Suzuki tried an Armdrag only for Kobashi to stand there in place and shove him off standing out. There were flashes of brilliance-like the armbreaker/sleeper spot Suzuki has repeated since in many of his famous matches. Suzuki grabbing a Sleeper on the ramp only for Kobashi to counter it by throwing himself from the ramp onto the floor. Kobashi's amazing out of nowhere counter Lariat. Suzuki breaking up a suplex no sell sequence with an Octopus Hold of all things. The finish that paid off Suzuki teasing Kobashi during the entire match and insisting on his defiance even after Kobashi headdropped him ten times and he was half dead and doing awesome slow motion slaps. But that just goes to show you can't have a great match by just doing a bunch of great stuff, even if the great stuff is more than spots. The stuff inbetween is always the most important. Kobashi didn't sell the arm more than surface level-though I don't think that played a big factor in how good the match wa (I didn't come in expecting the world's most nuanced selling performance from him anyway). It's frustrating to know Suzuki had better matches against Mutoh, Okada and Tanahashi than he did against Kobashi but he was also a more experienced worker by that point and understood what he needed to bring to the table better. ***1/4

A match totally made by the characters. Ogawa was only ever a heel to 2000s US puro fans and you can see that here too. Kobashi totally overwhelms him in every way so he's forced to attack him before the bell, spit water at him and all that jazz. It makes for a really fun opening with Ogawa using his speed and simple holds to counter Kobashi's power. They tie this into Ogawa playing possum after which he takes a cheapshot at Kobashi's knee. But he's still not booed here. One of my favourite things about this match is that there were essentially two control segments, and both vey similar. The first one had Ogawa working over Kobashi's knee-and there were far more important things to that segment working than Kobashi's selling. Due to how much bigger Kobashi is there was a sense he could reverse Ogawa and get back on top at literally any point in the match and that made the segment so much more engaging. Ogawa grabs a hold, Kobashi tries to power out, Ogawa hits him in the knee. Kobashi then grabs Ogawa's right arm to prevent him from hitting his knee but Ogawa jabs him with the left arm. And Ogawa then moves onto his next trick. Kobashi's Half Boston Crab escape of simply pushing himself backwards was a thing of beauty and fit into the narrative really well. The sense of urgency Ogawa worked with was crucial in this match-Kobashi's knee provided him an easy target any time he was in peril but the way he escaped Kobashi's Machine Gun Chops in a logical way is something that I've never seen anyone else do and it felt very natural for him to come up with a counter like that on the fly as Kobashi is about to cave his chests in. Kobashi gets some hope spots, never drops the selling, but Ogawa doesn't lose control. The point at which the crowd gets clued in is when Ogawa senses he is in so much danger the only way out is to push Kobashi onto the ref. That's when the booing starts. It's not that the crowd wasn't sympathetic towards Kobashi before that-but that's supposed to be the real start of the heat section. And Ogawa does well, hitting Kobashi's knee with the ringbell and such. But there we also encounter the biggest problem of this match. Ogawa's REAL heat section didn't last long enough. They didn't get the crowd into it the way they should've, which was a crucial mistake for this type of match. Kobashi gets back into control with some of by god the sickest ringpost shots you'll ever see. Smashing someone's head into the ringpost is often used as a cheap way to get to the blaed job but here they look so good Ogawa HAS to bleed to no expose every other time someone has bladed on that spot in the history of pro wrestling as nonsense. Kobashi's comeback is really good-mostly consisting of great looking punches. Sometimes he loses focus and does *wrestling moves* not really fitting for the occasion like a Powerbomb with a Jacknife pin, but mostly he is on point. And Ogawa's hope spots are worked the way you'd expect them to-with him taking cheapshots and bending the rules. He manages to get several convincing nearfalls out of them. But the beatdown on Ogawa wasn't proportional to the heat he'd earned. If Ogawa's heat segment was 2/3 minutes longer and Kobashi's comeback that much shorter this could be a legitimate all time classic. Alas, that was not to be. ****

Very surprised with both how much I enjoyed it and how many thoughts about the match I had whilst watching it. I watched it 4/5 years ago and found it good but not great and left it at that. On another note this just reminded me of how much I prefer 2000s NOAH as a setting over 90s All Japan. The heat for the entrances alone is inspiring-Kobashi gets entrance chants before he even steps foot on the ramp and Nagata is booed as loudly as an invader should be. I adored how the beginning was paced-Nagata taunting Kobashi with a slap was perfect and they let that big moment breathe but filled the time with gigantic and convincing facial expressions. Nagata's use of the Big Boot as a vicious cut-off during the match ruled. Kobashi used this amazing spot twice where he'd just push Nagata into the corner and start beating the shit out of him with neck chops and whatnot. It ruled. And watching this reminded of how amazing Kobashi's offence was in general. They kinda push each other with their shoulders and just stare in each other's eyes like they absolutely despise each other. And proceed to wrestle. Here I'd understadn the arguments it wasn't fitting, but it absolutely worked for me as they went into the test of strength which is a macho dick measuring spot and exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from two guys trying to prove their superiority. The wrestling itself is ok and peaks with Nagata doing a beautiful headscissors escape that got a reaction I can only compare to something out of Karl Gotch vs Inoki. There was some limbowork. It wasn't consistently sold. I don't care. I really don't care. Consistent limb selling is the most stupid and overrated concept of all time anyway. That's a thread for the MIS for another time. I'm much more interested in how good the actual limbwork is and what is means in the context of the match than how much it was dropped. It didn't mean that much here. It was used as a method by Nagata to wear down Kobashi. It produced some engaging in the moment work but didn't last long enough to matter as much as it could've. That's my problem with this match more than any limb selling-they had a lot of ideas they teased me with but didn't bother to explore them beyond surface level which is what prevented this from ever becoming a great match. But there are a lot of great moments-Kobashi randomly busting out a bunch of Ikeda-esque headbutts and Nagata's cut-offs would be the highlights. And I was pretty surprised with how strong Nagata's cut-offs were here-there was a spot where I thought they were already in the Kobashi emperor destroyer finishing stretch when he just high kicked him in the face. Kobashi's selling reminiscent of a boxer falling down played as big of a role in it working as the brutality of the kick but it was a magic moment. And Kobashi firing himself up was very similar to a tecnico doing so in Arena Mexico while selling or on defence. There was a suplex no-sell sequence-not the best one, but it wasn't a *bad* one even-them blocking each other's moves and acting like they were actually trying to beat one another helped tremendously. And there was a pretty great nearfall I totally bit on if you're more about that kind of stuff. ***1/2

Usually I wouldn't post a ~4~ year old review but I watched this twice and feel I did a good job of expressing what worked for me:

Like I haven't watched it already It's a great match. I'll see whether or not internet wayback machine preserved my review. I'm a big Sugiura fan as well but he's definitely not as good as Sasaki. I think the NOAH style was doomed once it became about "the stuff" rather than about constructing matches that happened to include "the stuff", but for a while they still had enough workers good enough to have great matches in that style. I still think peak Sugiura was a great performer-but getting that style right took a lot of effort , and he was never the type of wrestler to get more out of doing less and never seemed to grasp how to build a match in a way to get the crowd invested in it and maximize the reactions to what he's doing. He just went out there and did his stuff, sometimes to thunderous applause and sometimes (and predominantly in recent years) to crickets.

I'd rather not equate recklessness to stiffness. That match was incredibly dumb. Sasha could easily break her neck on a throwaway spot one of these days. She's already talked about how hurt she is due to all the bumping and she suffered a concussion very recently. So someone relatively injury-prone doing stuff like that is just insane.

Strowman is awesome and this squash ruled. The jobber was good enough, selling his hand when he punched Strowman and bumping nicely but this was all about Strowman throwing him around and treating him like a punching bag. Less thigh slapping midgets more wrestlers tall enough to play at least a power forward that refuse to bump please.