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Everything posted by GOTNW
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There's a pretty surprising amount of Super Dragon stuff on youtube actually, including singles matches vs. Danielson and Low Ki which are, surprise surprise, quite good.
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Considering how good he should be for them to go all in on him he's actually too good. How good his matches are is completely irrelevant to people who reject him.
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I'm not sure how we'd take stuff like that into account but one thing Lesnar is absolutely amazing at are beatdowns and similar brawling segments. The Undertaker pull apart is the most famous one, but any time he gets to wreck someone like that it's pretty great. The one on the post-Wrestlemania Raw was epic as well. Having said that Matt has raised some great points on Brock in the DVDVR March Madness warm-up thread and I'd pretty much have to agree with them all. I think this year has been a pretty clear failure for Lesnar, as he was brought in to do more, and instead of improving the quality of things surrounding him both the quality of his work and his aura suffered. Getting one over on Brock isn't as special as it used to be, his suplexes are treated like Armdrags and the WWE bumping style makes it so that him just throwing people around in three minute matches doesn't have the same entertainment value as Gary Albright doing so.
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Is this a reddit thing, a twitter thing, a wrestleforum thing or a you thing? I hope Reigns wins like I always do because he's one of the few actually good wrestlers on the WWE roster.
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How much great Necro is there? Super Dragon is on my list and I don't see him dropping off. I love Necro's big matches but Super Dragon also has a lot of stuff like beating the shit out of TARO and Excalibur in front of ten people that I love. Have to say I'm quite surprised 15 people are going to have at least one of them on their list.
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I don't see anything great in the Tanahashi match. I'd have it as maybe above average. I thought he was very good as AJPW junior champion but that was a long time ago and even then I thought his work was heavily flawed. Honestly I've thought his work has been pretty shitty since he signed with New Japan. He wouldn't make my 2010s top 100.
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The people who are going to vote high for those know where to find their stuff or watched it long before New Japan started taking stuff down anyway.
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If you like junior Ibushi he has more than enough stuff to warrant a vote. I imagine a lot of it has disappeared from the interwebs though. He's got three matches vs Generico in DDT, the Budokan Omega match, some Golden Lovers tags etc.
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Hashimoto-Chono main evented.
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I doubt anyone cares, but Parv spelling it like this reminded me of it so I will share this bit of knowledge with you anyway. As some of you may remember "Kea" was Maunakea Mossman before they changed his name so he would, uhm.....appeal to japanese fans more? I don't know. Anyway, because his name is read japanese-style by westernizing it his name would actually be Kea Taiyo, with Taiyo being his last name instead of his first as you'll usually find on most sites. Also, because the criteria for "peak" is roughly top thirty in the world I think it is worth noting Misawa finished #11 in the 2008 WKO100, which was his last "proper" year.
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Hey man whatever works.
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Takaiwa's in for me. I love to watch him beat people up way too much to exclude him. I think his sense of timing is incredible, which is why I can totally but into his matches whenever they are nearfall heavy, and in watching Ohtani themed stuff I'd actually look forward to him tagging in a lot more than I would say Masato Tanaka, even if I don't see myself making an argument Takaiwa is better in general. The idea he doesn't sell at all is ridiculous and simply factuay untrue. Sure, he'd do it occasionally and especially in bigger matches, but he way better at organically working them into matches than say......Shibata, Sekimoto,(name a modern puro worker). I think it's totally reasonae to blame him for excess in nearfalls and big moves but it's not something that bothers me one bit when watching his matches.
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Anyway. Shinya Hashimoto vs Satoshi Kojima-NJPW 11.6.1996. No wonder Kojima never fot over as company ace when he was in the same position for almost ten years. Kojima's outfit needs to be seen to be believed, it looks like he found it in a woodstock-themed second-hand shop. He has about one move which could conceivably put Hashimoto in danger (the Lariat) which makes up about half of his offence. Everything else he does isn't particularly memorable but luckily he wasn't in control much here. I will watch Hashimoto destroy someone any day of the week and that's what we get here. ***3/4 Shinya Hashimoto & Shinjiro Ohtani vs Atsushi Onita & The Great Sasuke-WEW 5.5.2002. Well that's one insane line up right there. It's understandable how this isn't a more famous match, as it's a pretty big mess, but one I still enjoyed. Onita doesn't do nearly as much as he's probably doing these days, Ohtani and Sasuke carry the workload with Hashimoto occasionally stepping in to kill someone. *** Shinya Hashimoto vs Hiroyoshi Tenzan-NJPW 4.2.1995. Hashimoto does a very good job of carrying Tenzan through a more evenly worked match. Tenzan's strikes looked surprisingly good, though him in control did get a bit tedious but luckily Hashimoto cut him off just as that was happening. Tenzan gets more shine than I expected before they went home and Hashimoto managed to turn what was usually a transitional hold in his matches to a believable nearfall due to how well he set it up and due to how smartly he generally finished matches. I find that to be a very good example of the numerous advantages his choice to intentionally not use all of his big offence in big matches had. ***1/2-***3/4 Shinya Hashimoto vs Genichiro Tenryu-NJPW 1.8.1998. Another match I watched before "getting" Hashimoto that deserved a rewatch. I remembered this match as them just stiffing each other so while I assumed being familiar with them would result in me liking it better this time around I didn't expect the difference to be so drastic. Yes-the match is very stiff, no doubt about that. But there are so many other things that are essential to its quality as well. How well they sold each other's strikes immediately came to mind, as did the sense of desperation and how well the fight for control was done. You get the gigantic facial expressions you'd want from this match, but what I was probably impressed the most with were transitions. Stuff like Tenryu cutting off Hashimoto's flurry with a kick jab, a surprising soccer kck Tenryu would throw when they were both down, Tenryu noticing Hashimoto was going to bounce off the ropes and then bouncing off the ropes himself to try and beat him to the punch but failing, Tenryu succeeding when he tried to do the same later on in the match because he'd beaten down Hashimoto enough, it manages to almost perfectly wed elements that make real fighting exciting with the ones that do the same for fake fighting. Great. So, so great. ****1/2
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http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xwxas_njpw-1972-karl-gotch-vs-antonio-ino_sport The main event of New Japan's first ever show. No idea how I'd rate it but I had a blast watching it and was particularly fascinated with how the crowd reacted to the action. Gotch's selling of Inoki's Forearms was amusing for what it was and it made me wonder how selling styles changed throughout history. Honestly the work here seems flashy and quite accessible to me, and Gotch showed he was a solid showman as well in his headscissors escape.
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- karl gotch
- antonio inoki
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(and 3 more)
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I think they were thrown off a bit by the response Fujiwara got and how much the crowd got behind him, which I would also credit to how heelish Hashimoto worked vs. Fujinami the previous two months.
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I could recommend you some disappointing Akiyama matches to make him drop off (he's in my top ten and I pimped him about as much as anyone but...fair is fair)
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Honestly Mutoh 95 G1 Final probably isn't a top twenty Hashimoto match for me at this point. I have all of these at *****: Shinya Hashimoto vs Riki Choshu-NJPW 10.8.1991. (this one I don't expect anyone else to rank nearly as high but. it works for me so) Shinya Hashimoto vs Hiroshi Hase-NJPW 3.8.1993. Shinya Hashimoto vs Jushin Liger-NJPW 24.2.1994. Shinya Hashimoto vs Hiroshi Hase-NJPW 13.12.1994. Shinya Hashimoto vs Nobuhiko Takada-NJPW 29.4.1996. Shinya Hashimoto vs Riki Choshu-NJPW 2.8.1996. Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Shinya Hashimoto & Yuji Nagata-Zero-1 2.3.2001. there's also vs Naoya Ogawa-NJPW 11.10.1999. which isn't on my official list because I was too lazy to do a write up but it will get both a rewatch and a write up in the (near;I hope) future.
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Shinya Hashimoto vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara-NJPW 1.6.1994. Not as great as I'd hoped it would be but still really good. It is worked with a slower, more methodical pace I could see throwing off some but that was a big part of why I liked it, it felt like a logical conclusion given their established characters and tendencies, for examples Fujiwara is known to either catch kicks whether or not they hit him beforehand and he tried to do that here but eventually Hashimoto just kicked him so hard Fujiwara couldn't fight back. The battle for the DDT at the end was great and there was some nice violent stuff but overall it didn't feel gratifying enough for a higher rating. ***1/2 Shinya Hashimoto vs The Great Muta-NJPW 20.9.1993. This was a badass match in 2002 so you'd expect it to rule when Mutoh was closer to his athletic prime but you just never know with him. I think I might've finally managed to put into words why the extended matwork sections work for me. The biggest problem I have with them in other styles is they just don't captivate me. It's not interesting, they don't try to make it interesting, they use the same holds and the same patterns over and over again. The traditional New Japan style does use a much wider array of holds but how the matwork seems to progress a lot more freely as well. And here you also get them doing a pretty neat "top this" sequence teasing a lot of their bigger moves as well as Hashimoto kicking Mutoh in the head to block a transition. I'm not usually a fan of Muta shtick but it adds a lot to the match here, as he uses the springboard to do a wacky somersault into the ring and Hashimoto just kicks him as hard as humanly possible as soon as he lands on his feet, Muta uses a young lion as a human shield to block Hashimoto's Spinning Heel Kick and they just starts literally throwing young boys at Hashimoto which is probably his career highlight. Using a chair in an IWGP Heavyweight Match isn't something I'd be crazy about either usually but they incorporate it really well here, managing to use it in several very smart transitions and spots. Great finish as well, usually you would just have Muta hit an obligatory Moonsault and maybe miss one for a lazy transition but here Hashimoto was desperately fighting to avoid it. This one exceeded expectations. ****1/4 Shinya Hashimoto & Naoya Ogawa vs Mark Kerr & Tom Howard-ZERO-1 9.12.2001. This has an awesome faux shoot vibe. Everyone's wearing gloves and Hashimoto is going to show us the true strength of pro wrestling. I don't remember Tom Howard much, I think he was in King Of Colosseum II, my memory of Mark Kerr's pro wrestling career is also blank, I have no idea what to expect and all of a sudden they start doing all this awesome matwork, Mark Kerr is kneeing and punching the shit out of people, Howard seamlessly transitions from doing awesome heel stooging to doing awesome takedown and hitting folks really hard in the face, there are so many great moments in this, they tease tension between Hashimoto and Ogawa, there's an amazing nearfall where Kerr starts choking Ogawa and Howard dashes at Hashimoto to stop his interference and takes this fucking 2011 Dolph Ziggler bump on a missed Spinning Heel Kick by falling out of the ring and instead of going to break up the submission Hashimoto beats Howard up a little more first and there's this good 10-15 second portion where Ogawa is selling like he's gonna die and the crowd is losing it and it's like something out of a 1995 All Japan tag and then Hashimoto finally breaks it up an pro wrestling is the best. Hashimoto and Ogawa use their badass double teams and there's another epic moment when they do the STO/German and Hashimoto knocks himself loopy on his own German and Ogawa and we get another great nerfall with a double countdown tease and Ogawa uses THE RULES OF PRO WRESTLING and stomps them both to break up the count. This has so much awesome struggling and face punching and bomb throwing and it's wonderful. I would honestly put it at ****1/2, I don't expect anyone else to love it as much as I did but.........man. Early ZERO-1 was so great. Shinya Hashimoto vs Tatsumi Fujinami-NJPW 5.6.1998. Last time I saw these two square off Hashimoto gave Fujinami his worst beating since the infamous Maeda match. Fujinami is getting older I'm not sure he can take one more. They start off with some nice matwork as you'd expect until Hashimoto out of nowhere counters a Headlock with a brutal DDT. Then we move onto Hashimoto kicking Fujinami's legs really hard and I'm thinking that is an acceptable substitute in case Fujinami is getting too old for this shit. They do a great callback spot to their 1994 title switch and tease Fujinami countering Hashimoto's kicks a couple of times but never go through with it. This builds to Fujinami snapping and slapping the daylights out of Hashimoto which in turn makes Hashimoto lose it and THE BEATDOWN now properly begins. They do a great job utilizing their signature moves and maximizing their value and when Fujinami finally manages to counter Hashimoto's kick it's a big deal. It's also really well done because he just viciously threw Hashimoto's leg on the ground instead of doing a Dragon Screw as Hashimoto would expect so when he goes for the Dragon Screw Hashimoto's leg is already weakened but not enough for him not to fight back and you have this amazing struggle over whether or not the move is going to go through. Another thing I love about Hashimoto is how well he uses his weight, he did this amazing counter to Fujinami's Dragon Sleeper where he just threw himself backwards and knocked Fujinami off his feet and the finish was a very smart play on that. I would have this one over four stars as well, I liked it more than the Muta match and about as much as the OHgun tag so ****1/2 sounds about right. Hashimoto's glassy-eyed selling at the end is picture perfect.
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I have a hard time thinking you wouldn't think there at least 8 other wrestlers he'd had ***1/2 matches against if you put in the time to watch them (7 actually, since you listed Misawa for Vader but didn't list Vader for Misawa). So yes.
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People who would fit this category: Ohtani, Kojima, Nagata, Hashimoto, Yone, Akitoshi Saito, Takao Omori, Keiji Mutoh/Taiyo Kea, Murakami, Fujinami, Katsuhiko Nakajima, Nakamura/Goto, Hase, Kensuke Sasaki.....
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Takuma/Naoki Sano, KENTA, Marufuji, Yoshinari Ogawa and Vader should all be in here as well. If I were to stretch this to include every guy Misawa had either several very good tag matches or at least one great singles or tag match who knows how many I'd end up with.
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I guess I could give him another look but his biggest problem for me is how unmemorable he is. Before I went through the 80s All Japan tags he was "the guy who took the first Dr.Death Backdrop". To me the big standouts of those tags were Choshu, Tenryu and Hansen. The biggest strenght of the All Japan tags to me is that you could put a solid worker in the mix, give him a clearly defined role and the match wouldn't suffer. I'm not especially interested in arguing about the merits of Gordy, Dibiase, young Kawada etc. but it seems obvious to me that the matches benefited because they had to do only certain things which gave them the opportunity to do them better than they usually would. I didn't see Yatsu do anything that would make me think he would work outside of that context and by all accounts both his singles and post All Japan work is quite disappointing.
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Shinya Hashimoto vs Toshiaki Kawada-AJPW 22.2.2004. Hashimoto, the previous champion, challenges Kawada to take back the Triple Crown Championship he'd never lost. Hashimoto had to vacate the title after a shoulder injury. This was actually one of the first Hashimoto matches I'd ever seen. When I watched it I thought it was a great match, but I watched it in a vacuum, not understanding all the nuances and psychology that were present in this match, and also with a much different mindset than the one I currently have (All Japan is the best wrestling ever, Marufuji is the best, more apron moves please). I thought it was a great match because they hit each other hard. But that's kind of omnipresent in every Hashimoto and Kawada match. This isn't worked like any other Hashimoto match and definitely not like any other Kawada match. I swear this was going to be at least **** for me for the entrances alone. Man Hashimoto just looks so cool. He comes out and he has the flashy jacket and the bandana and the crowd is losing their shit and I'm losing my shit and Hashimoto just carries himself like this is the most important thing we are ever going to witness. Then Kawada comes out and he's got the flashy robe and the cool belts and the crowd is going wild once again. Man the feeling out process in this one was super great. Just them stretching and staring at each other manages to be incredibly captivating and super awesome. First bigger thing Hashimoto does in this one is a Hane Goshi and it's hard to describe just how much the beauty of the technique resonated with me. That's one of the biggest strenghts of this match-every transition managed to look great, feel great and make sense in the context of the match. They go the strike exhanging and Hashimoto hits Kawada so hard he starts bleeding from his ear. That's right. I've seen a lot of fucked up things in professional wrestling, whether they be in FUTEN folks punching each other as hard as humanly possible or various deathmatch stuff but I don't ever remember feeling as horrified as I did once it hit me what had just transpired. They engage in a kick battle which you would want from famed kickers and the commentators bring up their fighting backgrounds and how that affects their kicking technique. Man this match rules so much. Hashimoto's karate proves to be stronger than whatever the hell Kawada did. That might have been the best Suimengiri he had ever done. Hashimoto attacks Kawada's leg and the commentators bring up Hashimoto submitting Kawada in a big tag match with a Kneebar which I'd kind of forgotten about despite watching the mentioned tag match. Kawada attacks Hashimoto's injured shoulder in return. That is such an important part of what makes this match work, tapped up shoulder Hashimoto is an amazing character, a couple of months beforehand he had a match vs. Ohtani that featured one of the most unique finishes in wrestling history and it really adds a lot to this match because there's a feeling Hashimoto could fall apart at any given moment. Hashimoto makes sure to beat the shit out of Kawada's leg enough to make you feel the same way about him as well. Kawada initially tries to fire back by using the same leg Hashimoto had started attacking but Hashimoto (no)sells them perfectly as Kawada was throwing them both with a weakened limb and from a really terrible position. Hashimoto did register the kicks Kawada threw with his left leg. Of course-kicks are too big of a part of Kawada's offence for him to give up on them entirely, but despite hitting them he always sells sells the pain while setting the move up and after hitting it, in a way most wrestlers who "fight through pain" simply don't. There's a pretty great moment where Hashimoto goes for another Hane Goshi and there's a struggle over whether he's going to throw Kawada or Kawada is going to throw him by countering it with a Backdrop Suplex (like in that awesome Kawada-Naoya Ogawa match) and despite managing to throw Hashimoto he doesn't really do it with the force he usually would due to his leg giving out. There's a lot of drama over whether or not they are going to be able to execute a certain move due to the damage their injured limbs have suffered which is constantly played up, especially in the final strike exchange. Finish is about as fitting as it couldv've been. This was fucking amazing. I wanted more though which is how I don't feel about the Hashimoto matches I've rated as perfect. Maybe I will improve its rating after another rewatch. ****3/4
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Karl Gotch http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/32764-yoshiaki-fujiwara-vs-karl-gotch-njpw-111982/ http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/33308-karl-gotch-vs-billy-robinson-iwe-421971/ http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/33305-karl-gotch-vs-michiaki-yoshimura-jwa-19610501/