GOTNW
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[2017-07-21-NJPW-G1 Climax] Kota Ibushi vs Zack Sabre Jr
GOTNW replied to KawadaSmile's topic in July 2017
A fun little match featuring some of their "best of" spots, but nothing great. Sabre's matwork is too loose for him to leave a big impression in control and his pastiche of jiu jitsu and Johnny Saint spots has reached a point where, at least in this match, it wasn't flashy enough to impress with style or legitimate enough to impress with sheer danger and pain. Almost every big spot here was recycled from a big match these two have had previously, and even when there was something new it lacked in execution (I loved the idea behind Ibushi's palm strike, but he chest slapped Sabre and Sabre sold it like he hit him in the jaw, it looked ridiculous. You want to see that same spot done right, watch the first Misawa vs Kawada match, there's a kick which at first glance actually looks like it hit the neck/jaw and Misawa's selling is of course a thousand times better). Maybe the biggest problem of the match is that lacked the glue to connect everything. There wasn't a strong dynamic-Sabre going toe to toe with Ibushi in stand up when his offence looks so much worse in that department was ridiculous, they were more focused on getting in counters than getting over a struggle and actually milking the holds, even the finish felt abrupt in that regard, Ibushi just picked Sabre up and slammed him. I still enjoyed Sabre putting on some wacky holds and the little input Ibushi actually got in, but this was disappointing. *** -
This was essentially a shoot style spotfest for the most part. I quite like their offence, so I didn't have much problem with it, even if it seemed there wasn't much rhyme or reason to it. There were occassional highlights in the matwork in the form of a cool counter, but for the most part it was just fine and used like submission finishers are in modern wrestling, milked to get the crowd behind the wrestler crawling to the ropes. In that sense I liked how they didn't make it too obvious what they were doing, as they'd have a wrestler reach the ropes before the crowd paked in vocal support or before they even had enough time to start chanting at all too. Still, the best parts of the match were the kicking flurries, and the match just reached a higher level once they reached the finishing stretch and the match turned into an all out brawl, it was like a pastiche of a Bruce Lee movie and a high end K1 fight which appropriated the best of both worlds. It had took the cartoonish stamina and reistance of an action movie and the brutality and kicking precision from actual combat, but also maybe the best exhaustion selling ever. Maeda and Yamazaki looked completely gassed, and a desperate Maeda trying to grab Yamazaki's leg to counter with a Capture Suplex was an amazing sight, and the rowdiness of the crowd even minutes after the match really cemented how much 99% of wrestling is missing out by not having the ability and vision to fully encapsulate the humanity of combat. ****1/4
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The second match from UWFII's first show Starting Over is as intruiguing, ambitious and entertaining as you'd hope for. The structure of the match is simple-it starts out with them simply gauging the distance with leg kicks and some simple takedowns and mat exchanges and the match gradually heats up. The way the holds are used here is hard to compare to anything else-like a weird combo of U-style and classic NWA style. Essentially, there are plenty of submission attempts where the submission isn't fully locked in, and the true pay-off is more in the transition which comes after the hold than the hold itself. They managed to convincingly display their character gradually getting frustrated and going from cheapshots to just plain brawling. Anjoh pinballed as much as he possibly could've in this setting, the novelty of the style resulted in some interesting moments like Anjoh going for a Jacknife Pin, shooting Nakano into the ropes and Nakano going for a Dragon Suplex as well as going for a pin straight off a German. The match also had a well executed shoulder injury angle, which was sold fittingly (Anjoh targeted it with his kicks and strikes and went for submission on Nakano's bad arm, Nakano sold it initially and after the match but didn't weep and go overboard). Really, had they found conclusions other than rope breaks a few more times when there was a locked in submission this would've easily been a great match. ***3/4
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This is a battle of two kickers (well, Yone is a kicker when he's motivated enough to be one) on a Misawa memorial show, and you get exactly what you'd expect. Aside from the opening sequence, there aren't really any differences in the type of work throughout the match-they almost immediately get to striking at each other, with the intensity and urgence being the main difference depending on when it took place. They in their shots nicely, the control segments aren't huge, but Yone does get tangible control over the match and at point Nakajima just goes berserk, mounting Yone and just killing him with forearms, setting off the finishing stretch. Yone's Lariats throughout the match looked great, Nakajima is great at using his kicks as cut-offs (espeacially in the later portions of the match) and the double slap spot was very cool and almost surprisingly fresh. They managed to get the crowd invested in the match without forcing an epic or going needlessly long, which was probably the right call for a "smaller" title defence. ***1/2
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Fun tournament match which doesn't shoot for epicness but simply displays their strengths in a conscise manner without any stupid gimmickry and simultenously presenting enough novelty to make it stand out a little. All of their usual spots are here, but un an easily digestible format-Suzuki modifies his rope hanging armbar by going on the apron and trapping Nakajima's foot between the ropes instead of just countering a strike as an obvious set-up for the spot and cranks Nakajima's arm by hammerlocking him with a chair. Nakajima's flashy kicks and strikes are matched well by Suzuki's well timed seling of big spots while Nakajima's upbeatness prevents Suzuki from losing focus which allows them to seamlessly build on previous sequences. ***1/4
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Jo and Okuda cut a classic "we're not done with each other yet, but we're teaming up to face the invaders" promo before the match and proceed to absolutely deliver. A great coming out performance for them, and a wild, chaotic tag team brawl I'd expect more from WWC of whatever indy decides to book LA Park, but it is back in Korauken and suddenly the days of Tarzan Goto blasting people don't feel so long ago. The key here is the modern puro strike exchange-usually a dreadful sight as two people exchange strikes for x amount of time. There are several differences here which make it work. There's a hierarchy-Jo and Okuda are severely outclassed. Murakami and Sato take their shots, but they can't afford to take shots back. The stubborness and agression in Jo and Okuda's performances really shakes things up-they keep getting up as fast as they can, desperately striking away, blindsighting and double teaming Sato and Murakami every chance they get. The consistency and dedication in their performances successfully creates the illusion that, once they do go down, it's not because it's "what you're supposed to do after losing a strike exchange", but because they really have been terribly overwhelmed. Sato and Murakami deliver the beating you'd want from this type of match-Murakami might as well have time traveled back in 2001, he looke like the best wrestler in the world here, just throwing ungodly punching combinations, wicked uppercuts, nearly killing people by hitting reckless Harai Goshis. Sato's forearms, headbutts and knees were on point as well, and the suit and giant tatoos make them look like a convincing yakuza pair. ****1/4
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The build up hypes it as "MMA vs pro wrestling". The idea of Takaiwa trying to bulldoze through Aoki who would in turn try to grab flash submissions sounds great, but it's not exactly what we got here. A promising opening had Takaiwa desperately avoiding Aoki's submission counters and Aoki pinning himself on a sleepr, but the middle of the match wasn't as creative, as it mostly consisted of Aoki grabbing submissions over and over again. He wouldn't lock them in completely and then hold them for two minutes, but it never seemed like he could actualyl win with one of them nor were Takaiwa's escapes especially interesting. Aoki's strikes and kicks were disappointing, and the finishing strech was kickstarted by Takaiwa finally getting some prowres moves in and going for the kill. This created a game in which Takaiwa needs a big move like a Powerbomb or a Death Valley Bomb, while Aoki needs a submission, and both can counter each other. Aoki's last Korauken match had him choke out Funaki while Funaki was trying to deadlift him, so it was a clever thing to build on. ***
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So professional wrestling shouldn't take in athletes with prior athletic experience? Or that they could but they should never mention it if it exists?
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[2017-07-09-WWE-Great Balls of Fire] Roman Reigns vs Braun Strowman
GOTNW replied to SmartMark15's topic in July 2017
Incredible match. Reigns was basically playing Fujiwara the entire time, in that he tried to trick Braun by using posts, turnbuckles, ropes, the ambulance, whatever be around him he'd use in his version of the "wait in the corner and then counter once oppoent attacks". His offence ruled-his punches may be the best in the world right now, even the Superman Punches here looked incredibly sharp, everything he did was on point. But that only went so far, as Braun would just demolish him whenever he'd get his hands around him. We were reminded of this repeteadly every time Braun would throw Roman in som insane manner (and Roman deserves props for taking the insane bumps and commiting to it), but the Samoan Drop in which Roman struggled to lift Braun and the was immediately shoved off and the chair no-sell were probably the peak of it from an artistic standpoint. A match like this could easily verge into stuppid gimickry, but they just stuck to sheer brutality and it worked wonderfully. The shrieks of women once Roman and Braun were brawling near the ambulance were bone chilling. The finish was wonderful in its simplicity, and the post-match refreshing in that a WWE face didn't sit there kneeled making sad faces because he lost a match but actually went after a nemesis and showed some edge, especially in the context of a loss on a technicality in a long-term feud. ****1/4 -
[2017-07-09-WWE-Great Balls of Fire] Brock Lesnar vs Samoa Joe
GOTNW replied to Microstatistics's topic in July 2017
I thought this had the making of a great match. There was a good build up to it (the wild pull-apart brawls are pretty much the only thing WWE's done in the last few years that has managead to generate universal excitement and approval) which put over Joe as a threat to Lesnar. The match itself had an incredibly gritty feel to it as well as a sense of urgence-I've long thought Lesnar works best as a vulnerable monster, and Joe really brought the fight to him here, his punches were absolutely on point. Another thing that consrasted this from the usual WWE match is how closely fought this was-you had the majority of the match pretty much fought in the clinch, with constant punches, shoves, pulls and so on. Lesnar's selling was on point, and his ability to make the most redundant spots breathtaking with his freakish athleticism is something to behold-the way he slithered underneath Joe was just unreal. My biggest problem with this match was just how annoying Lesnar's use of the German Suplex was to me. It's basically a Clothesline in 1998 WWF, a Shoulder Block in modern BJW or a Reverse Frankensteiner in an indy match. There is no meaning or sense of danger to it, it's just slammed into your head that this weak, unimpressive slam is a marketing scheme for WWE to print shirt off. You have a man who could rip off heads of pretty much everyone on the planet and he's doing something so lame. Why? It doesn't look good, the selling logic is consistent in that his opponents dont' treat it as important, the German Suplexes just add nothing to do match under this structure and eat away precious time. I'm ambivalent on the finish-a plain old flash finish with a pin hold would've worked way better for protecting Joe, but I have no idea where they plan to go with it. They set it up in a manner that didn't make me think Lesnar was ever truly in danger, and considering their goals is probably just protecting Lesnar and having him do something interesting in the mean time, it may have been the right call, unless they need Joe to challenge again. ***3/4 -
Terrible example, Funaki was the ace of Pancrase and a Triple Crown champion at a time All Japan still regularly ran Sumo Hall. He was also all but "lower ranked" in PWFG and was clearly positioned as a future star in UWF.
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The announcer says the match went 10:46, and we get a little more than three minutes of action, but the match *feels* complete, so props to whomever cut it or mother nature for preserving the parts of the tape they could make something off. We see some opening armwork after which they move onto the legwork and thing get heated-Oki just obliterates Andrews, relentlessly going for Figure Fours. Andrews does a good job of using ring positioning to escape, but eventually Oki gets back on the onslaught, and thing continue to look grim. Andrews literally takes a full on Flair/Michaels corner bump to the outside as a stark reminder there is nothing new under the sun, and Oki finishes him off with a nice strike combination, including a neat back elbow/headbutt in the corner. Very, very good.
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We only get about a minute and a half of action, but man oh man does it look incredible. There's an awesome bit where Oki runs away from Killer X, even almost hiding behind the ref, only to suck in Killer X into a Headbutt, and Oki's Headbutt is the be-all and end-all of all strikes. It's almost unreal seeing Killer X bump the way he did in a match from 1961-really gigantic pinball selling with him jumping in the air, taking a huge bump off an irish whip and swinging once he was caught up in the ropes. Killer X got back into the match by throwing some mean strikes and finishing the match off with a brutal diving knee. Hard to judge without it full thing, but what we have makes it look great.
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Nowhere near as cool as it sounds. A two minute clip shows Antonio doing a feat of strength in which he pulls a full buss, a lot of crowd shots and a JIP with some fun brawling before a count-out finish. Worth a watch for the novelty of it at least.
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Decided to rewatch this and was startled at how tight and great everything before the finish was. While Kimura has the judo prowess, Rikidozan simply uses his strength to counter his attempted throws and submissions, easily shoving him away most of the time. Kimura's fear of pins is so refreshing-he immediately gets his shoulder up, kicks away and/or rolls to his stomach, no sign of even allowing a pin, let alone any counts. Kimura seemed to have a strong graps of selling-loved how he desperately fought off the headscissors and just recklessly threw himself out of them first chance he got. Rikidozan's offence may have been quite basic but there's nothing quite like hearing a gigantic thud made by someone bouncing off the mat, and I struggle to think of seeing anyone with better bodyslams than the ones Rikidozan executed here. There was some fun finisher teasing which the crowd bit on, especially when Rikidozan would go for his big Neck Chop, I totally bought into him making Kimura flinch. The finish somehow looked even more violent on another watch, it's basically a combination of Bas Rutten vs Funaki and Fujita vs Bob Sapp, you get the world's nastiest palm strikes combined with brutal soccer kicks, but even PRIDE didn't allow fighters to basically stomp someone on the back of the head. Of course the match is an amazing piece of historic footage, but the work rules too. ****1/4
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[2012-03-04-NJPW-40th Anniversary] Kazuchika Okada vs Tetsuya Naito
GOTNW replied to Loss's topic in March 2012
I'll note that at the time, this was really THE match that made people buy into Okada-the extravagant money falling at the entrance and the match itself (which I thought was New Japan's 2012 MOTY at the time and one of the best matches of the year then) really made that switch from "what are they doing" to "yeah, there's something there". Another important note to add is that 2012 is when footage of japanese wrestling started becoming more scarce and harder to find in the west-it was just before they started doing international IPPVs that some of the usual sources disappeared, and it resulted in a couple of months of chaos. -
The aforementioned Hashimoto vs Ogawa is literally as much of a squash as Misawa vs Kawada or any other epic japanese wrestling match ever. Han vs Nagai certainly felt like an extender squash, though it feels like after a certain time passes a match starts feeling more like a dominating performance and less like a proper squash. Off the top of my head I'd probably go with Maeda vs Tamura from 1989.
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The first shoot style match of the show! This was something like a RINGS match with a more focused narrative-some nice matwork at the start before Funaki catches Aoki with a HUGE leg kick, after which Aoki's leg becomes a target and Funaki uses it both for direct attacks and feints. Funaki's dominance lasts until he goes for one his more pro-style moves (the Penalty Kick) which Aoki uses for a counter and they end up in a whirlpool of lightning fast hold counters. It really is saying of both man's talents (but especially Funaki's-since he's the one that's done them regularly for many years) that a mostly methodical short match can be this good. ***1/4
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Kanemoto was so great here-just playing a marvelous prick and bullying Nakai and Susumu. Nakai put on a really good performance himself, trying to match Kanemoto both in stiffness and dastardliness. Tanaka did his shtick, which is putting more effort into getting his pose in than the actual wrestling, and Susumu looked like a generic japanese indy wrestler, even busting out a Pedigree Codebreaker at one point. Assuming Kanemoto does more in NEW I could see him and Nakai having a great feud akin to the one he had with Kazuki Hashimoto a few years ago, we really could use more kicker vs kicker match-ups. Handshakes are refused after the match once again and NEW shines as a beacon of hope for japanese wrestling. ***-***1/4
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A new challenge arises as I wonder how to accurately transcribe chinese names, almost wishing they'd just gimmick them in a full caps single word. Lin is a natural-his charisma and wit really shine in a match like this. It doesn't look like he's quite figured out what to do offensively yet, but here it didn't matter much, as all he had to do was pinball was Takaiwa's offence and make goofy faces. An entertaining squash. ***
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Eh. Neither here nor there. The finish was fun, as the crowd got into Feng (KENSO's cornerman work may deserve credit there but the camera didn't really focus much on him) and his roll-ups and Moribe started busting out some violent offence like the Backdrop, but the opening matwork was really pedestrian and Feng's fundamentals are worryingly lacking. **1/2
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Akira Jo tells us he's going to show us a new version of himself! I'm not sure exactly what the old version of Akira Jo was, but let's not dwell on that. Apparently he made some changes on his gear and whatnot. In his way stands Katsumi Oribe, a senior wrestler nicknamed "Mr. Karate". You will be shocked to learn Mr. Karate's signature offence includes karate kicks. A fun little match-it's weird some of these NEW matches manage to be eerily similar to modern puro matches but unique in that they get the important stuff right. They do a bunch of elbow exchanges here-and their elbow shots look fine, but it's the way they sell the aggression and dedication that really makes it work, as well as all the other strikes and kicks they throw in to keep it varied. Most of Oribe's kicks looked good, though he couldn't really land the standing high kick properly. The crowd got into Jo's comeback before he was inevitably put away. The post-match handshake turning into a mini brawl was nice, handshake and hugs have plagued everything from indy wrestling to the UFC, there's a lack of post-match hate that I hope NEW can fill. ***
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkQud-TXMxg
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A star rating is just a formatting of a number. A lot of people became insecure when Dave "broke" the system because they felt it somehow impacted their own ratings. I don't believe a perfect match has ever taken place, and use ***** to refer to a match belonging to "best x of all time" and reaching a certain level of transcendence, but when I express myself more clearly (using percentages) the best match ever is 97%, second is 96%, fifth 95% and so on. I'm too lazy and frankly just don't care about the average match enough to give it a rating with such precision, so I just reserve it for those that would usually be "five stars" or over 90%. I have one philosophy, Meltzer has another, you may have a third one, all are fine. Dave is on record saying a perfect match doesn't exist and everything can be topped. And even Cornette, who was supposedly the one that started the use of star rating in wrestling critique, said that initially the highest rating was four stars-until he saw a match that was too good and had to be rated with a fifth one (Lawler vs Funk). It's clear Meltzer's ratings of wrestling matches are like those of gymnastics, except he just comes up with a number according to how he feels at the time instead of thinking it through in a manner a professional judge does. What you see with Dave isn't even unique to the wrestling culture-we haven't had a musical reference in a while-do you fellow kids know Anthony Fantano and Pitchfork? The same thing happens when they give out a "controversial" rating. Meltzer is also running a business, and has shown himself to be a smart businessman-we know a lot of his decisions are based on what will drive subscription numbers. Rating a match may or may not be one of them.