cactus
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Everything posted by cactus
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A 50+ year old broadway sounds like it has the potential to be a complete snoozefest, but Destroyer injects a boat load of personality and comedy into this that keeps your attention even during the many, many lengthy holds featured here. Baba has a good grasp on psychology and knows when to throw a big strike and he's surprisingly good at keeping up with Destroyer once the technical exchanges pick up in speed. Destroyer uses a lot of a wide array of subtle heel tactics to gain an advantage, including concealing a foreign object in his trunks and then using it 20 minutes later to bust open Baba. The comedy here is strong too, as I really dug when Destroyer would do all kinds of technical spots which would always end up with him with his head locked into a leg scissors, frustrating the masked gaijin to the delight of Baba and the crowd. The finish is a bit crap, but there's so much to love about this once you give it you give it the patience it needs, that I can overlook it. ★★★★½
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Big moves and even bigger dives. This is a highly influential spotfest. I thought Togo and Hamada worked well as the match's sole mini hosses, and Yakushiji hits some insane moves and felt like a natural babyface. Just when you think that this is starting outwear it's welcome, they wow you with a big spot, athough I agree that this would of benefited from a bit of trimming. ★★★★¼ -
[1990-09-01-AJPW-Summer Action Series II] Mitsuharu Misawa vs Jumbo Tsuruta
cactus replied to Loss's topic in September 1990
For whatever reason, I was under the belief that this match pales in comparison to their June match. Thankfully that wasn't the case and this more than delivered. There's a lot of callbacks to their last match and the crowd are molten hot and are dying for Misawa to shock Japan yet again. Tsurata puts in a wonderful performance. He's grumpy and pissed off, but you can see that he's starts to doubt himself. He blocks Misawa's first elbow and neutralises Misawa from doing any of his junior stuff by going after his abdomen. The middle portion of this match loses some steam, but once Tsuruta starts getting frustrated and releases the hate, the match becomes shit hot again. Misawa stuns the audience by kicking out of a Backdrop Driver, but he has no chance of kicking out of a second. Good shot, rookie, but you've got plenty to learn! ★★★★¾ -
An absolute masterclass on how to wrestle as a heel by Jumbo. He stiffs Tenryu and takes a few liberties here and there, but it's never over the top. It's always subtle and feeds fuel to Tenryu's comeback. Tenryu sneaks in a quick German for a two count early into this, but it's mostly Jumbo taking control after that. Watching the faces in the crowd looking more and more shocked every time Tenryu kicked out made me realise I was watching something truly special. This blew me away when I watched it for the first time and it gets even better with age. This is where King's Road began. ★★★★★
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Rewatched this for the GME project and I definitely was overthinking it when I watched this last year. I think I was being overly critical and trying to look for flaws, but I didn't think the middle portion dragged at all on this viewing, and they were essential for the crowd to really vouch for a Misawa comeback. Essential viewing for anyone wanting to get into 90's AJPW. ★★★★★
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Rewatched this today. I don't quite rate it as high as I did five years back, but it's a lot of fun that serves as an appetiser for the much superior Funks vs Hansen and Gordy match. ★★★★
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Great match. Kawada is still a rookie in dodgy tights, but you can see here that his selling ability is still top notch. He's outclassed by Hansen and Gordy, but his heart and quickness gives him some leverage against the bully gaijins. Kawada tries his hardest to save his partner from a beating reminded me of a rookie Kobashi trying to hang with Jumbo in the early 90's. ★★★★¼
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Whilst they're never able to capture the magic of the '86 NJPW vs UWF elimination tag, this was still a whole bunch of fun. Even though we are still a year off from him donning the Jushin Liger gimmick, Keichii Yamada shows that he has tons of potential, he has a lot of heart and wrestles this match like it's a sprint. Fuijiwara is fantastic as always. Sadly those two are some of the first to go and the match slows down a bit. Things get going again once it's down to Choshu, Fujinami and H. Saito. Choshu is a lariating machine, but eventually finds himself eliminated. Saito finds himself busted open and bleeds buckets. He really starts to up his performance around this point and sells his arse off to put Fujinami over. The shock finish caught me off guard and wrapped this one up nicely. This may not have the frantic pace or the sheer talent (Choshu's team was seriously lacking in top tier guys), but this is a must watch for fans of classic NJPW. ★★★★½
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I saw this a few months ago and I echo your thoughts. It felt like a 90 minute commercial for WWE. I think it's more of a movie for non-fans. Also it's kinda awkward viewing now considering everything that has come out about the Knight family in the last month.
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I'd say he's a fair shout. The Bar were one of the best tag teams of the last decade. They could get a fun match out of anyone and worked well as a unit.
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Choshu might not be the most interesting to watch from a workrate perspective, but he brings the goods in an intense and heated environment like this one. Yatsu is definately the weakest link here, but he at least scores some convincing nearfalls in the later part of the match. Jumbo is a top guy, but he's not quite reached ace levels yet. The story of this match is that he needs to rely on Tenryu to save him multiple times. Jumbo gets cut up badly here, and the crowd are rooting for him big time. ★★★★½
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As I said in the PPV thread, this would of been miles better if they had this as a straight forward street fight, with Rollins threatening to blind Rey after taking out his other eye during the angle on Raw a few months back. But that wouldn't generate interest/curiosity, so we get an Eye For An Eye match instead. The match is good, with a lot of weapon spots worked around them going after each other's faces, with some tasteful high spots peppered in (I love the sunset flips into the plexiglas). We see them snap a kendo stick in half and they recreate the Tully Blanchard/Magnum T.A broken chair leg spot. The main issue about this match is that they never commit to the ridiculous of the stipulation. Sure, the fake eye and the vomiting was laughable bad, but there's nothing else that makes this stand out outside of that. ★★★
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If you mainly want to book shows and run a promotion, I can't recommend EWR enough. TEW is good, but it's so in-depth that a week in that game can last well over an hour if you are running more than one show. EWR is more streamlined and too the point. I just finished a game where I ran Mid-South in 1985.
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I could of sworn that I read something about Braun making her uncomfortable around the time they did the Mixed Match Challenge, but I can't find anything online about it, so I'm probably misremembering it. My bad.
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Yeah, that fake out was the best part of the match. Eh, pretty bad show tbh. Banks/Asuka was probably my match of the night despite the naff finish.
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I take this back. This has outstayed it's welcome, just like this cinematic wrestling trend. Was there any truth in the rumours that Bliss didn't want to work with Braun as he's a bit of a creep?
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This is bad, but the good kind of bad.
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That's it. WWE's has had a solid in ring product for well over a decade now. The main issues with their shows is the booking and presentation. This Ziggler/Mcintyre stipulation is dumb, but they're pulling it off reasonably well, for now at least...
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God, this eye shit is embarrassing. This has to be one of the best worst PPVs they've done in a long time. Mania was a success and MITB and Backlash were better than they had any right to be, but this is bad even by lockdown standards.
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Really good match, but man, that finish was crap.
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I didn't even notice the fake eye. Sasha vs Asuka is fun, but it's struggling to keep my attention after the insanity of that last match.
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So Rollins vomited. Y'know if they just booked that as a no DQ match and they just had Rollins threaten to go after Rey's other eye in the build up, that would be a fine match. Skip the vomiting as well, of course.
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This match isn't half bad if you overlook the eye nonsense. Wasn't expecting them to do the Magnum TA/Tully Blanchard spot.
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I'm shocked by that too. This is live, so I have no idea who they are going to do the eye removal gimmick.
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A vanilla Rollins versus Mysterio match would be a lot better. You could tell Mysterio was going to jump Rollins as they went to that camera angle.