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William Bologna

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Everything posted by William Bologna

  1. William Bologna
    I blame the crowd for this never really getting going. They should have been on fire for Nagata putting that punk in his place! But they were lukewarm and mostly Naito fans, so we didn't get the heat.
  2. William Bologna
    Makabe's been generally unmemorable so far, but this was pretty good. If nothing else, the finishing sequence was brutal enough that I'm going to remember it - that knee to the face off the top rope was really something. Nice to see Honma hanging out, all looking like he skinned a hot dog and wore it on his face.
  3. William Bologna
    Eesh. Fale's really good at what he does, but he had to get out of his comfort zone here, and it didn't work. Worst match of the tournament so far.
  4. William Bologna
    Hot stuff. Yoshi-Hashi doesn't bring much to the table other than a midlife crisis haircut and general air of trying too hard, but he did enough here. Ishii is an absolute master of professional wrestling.
  5. William Bologna
    Ibushi is just killing it. I can see why everyone wants to sign him.
  6. William Bologna
    I was disappointed in this. Both guys are doing great character work, and I figured they'd mesh. Against Sanada, Suzuki was setting Sanada up for the babyface comebacks that are usually so effective since he's such an evil bastard. Problem was Sanada isn't a face and doesn't show a lot of fire. Juice is and does, but Suzuki just didn't seem interested in setting him up for anything. Too bad.
  7. William Bologna
    Five powerbombs in this match. Elgin is such a hack.
  8. William Bologna
    Is Elgin always this bad? He has the overloaded moveset of a CAW, and when he tries to do a sequence he looks he's going through a memorized dance routine. It was not clear to me why the finish hurt Elgin more than Tonga.
  9. William Bologna
    He also liked Herb Abrams. His standards for people who pay him aren't all that high.
  10. William Bologna
    This is the first time I've watched a tournament like this all the way through, and that did expose some of the flaws. All those hardcam house shows where it was ten minutes of shtick and then go to the finish. Seeing everyone's spots every other day instead of a couple times a month. You really noticed the difference in effort when they got to Korakuen. For all the hype about the super flippy A block, I think I liked B better. Taguchi, Kanemaru, ACH, Bushi, and Tiger Mask all exceeded my expectations. Meanwhile, Ricochet was a huge disappointment - he's got no presence and little to keep you involved between flips. Dragon Lee and Scurll suffered from seeing them every other day. Takahashi has enough charisma and big spots that I don't mind him as champ, but he's not top tier. I hated the final. Why did Kushida decide to work Ospreay's leg? He's going to ignore it, and you're going to the arm later anyway. Also, Kushida debuted a new finisher in this tournament. Three matches later, he's doing it off the top rope. At least it led to the finish. I think Kushida is the best guy around, and he had a good tournament, but that match was silly.
  11. William Bologna
    Volador looks like Bret Hart. He also a completely flat tournament. I've already forgotten all his matches.
  12. William Bologna
    I was really impressed with this, simply because it told a story. ACH is the rich man's Ricochet.
  13. William Bologna
    God I hated this. I read tons about the first one before I actually saw it, and I expected to be on Team Vader, but I wound up really liking it. This one, though, was self-indulgent and maudlin. Matches where the only way to hit a move is by reversing the other guy's move are exhausting to watch and silly. When you do that for half an hour, and then hold hands and make speeches about it - it doesn't help. This match gets negative two stars because I docked it five for self-importance.
  14. William Bologna
    I haven't decided how I feel about Sabre, but Kushida is my overall #1 right now. This was just awesome, much better than the Takahashi/Scurll match on the same show. The matwork was compelling, my main man Kushida got to show lots of fighting spirit, and the match had a nice escalation throughout. My only complaint was that Sabre never made it seem like he was in peril. He did some really nifty stuff when he was pretending that one of his arms didn't work, but his facial expressions and body language never got out of cocky mode. I enjoyed the crowd's method of songwriting, in which they'd take a familiar tune and shoehorn "Zack Sabre Jr." into it. It worked with "Seven Nation Army," and it worked with the opera tune one particularly artistic fan tried. It's the same method I use to write songs about my cats, and it's always a winner.
  15. William Bologna
    I feel like I'm the only person who had the Shibata match ruined for me by this, but this is exactly why I didn't love it.
  16. William Bologna
    I didn't think as little of it as Mr. Boots did, but there's something missing from Takahashi's matches. I miss Kushida.
  17. William Bologna
    I love that NPJW World is putting stuff like this up. There was something missing here. It was all downhill from the umbrella shot, and I'm not sure why. It just dragged, and the ADD camera work didn't help. It was poorly paced, and they went to the "Scurll does his personal action but it causes him to get his comeuppance" well too often. I hope Takahashi doesn't suck. He's a really fun character - he licks belts and umbrellas, eats athletic tape, and has the Misfits on his jacket. But what if his matches aren't any good? That'd be a shame.
  18. William Bologna
    This is better than their match from the 2000 Dome show. It's an urgent sprint, which makes sense considering the stakes and that this is neither man's first match on the night. Both look focused - they get this over as an Important Match. And then they just beat the hell out of each other. Kawada makes Sasaki's lousy clotheslines look as good as they can. And I don't want to take away from Sasaki - he's great here. Kicks hard, slaps hard, and his body language when he can't wait to hit the NLB and put Kawada away is perfect. They resisted the urge this time to take turns hitting each other and yelling. They worked this like a fight they wanted to win.
  19. William Bologna
    There are four Kawada matches on NJPW World, and they really emphasize how much better Kawada was than these NJPW chumps. This is a really good match in spite of Tenzan, whose offense is just ridiculous. He spends most of this match on offense, which is too bad for a couple reasons: 1. He's bad at it B. The crowd, which you might expect to be rooting for the home team, wants Kawada to win. They want Kawada/Sasaki in the final, and they pop big when they get it. So this is pretty great thanks to Kawada's selling, Kawada's desperation punch to knock down Tenzan and give him an opening to start kicking head, and Kawada's offense.
  20. William Bologna
    The NJPW World version of this has some fun front matter - Masa Fuchi (current All-Asia tag team champ!) comes out and talks for a while, then Riki Choshu comes out and they shake hands. But then Chono busts in and acts very disrespectfully, to the point that Fuchi throws a hat at him. No entrances, unfortunately. I remember Kawada's trip to the ring being something special. The match . . . well, the philosophy is interesting. The new All Japan is going to be less about head drops and more about hitting dudes really hard, which I'm all for. If only that didn't involve those idiotic "now hit me and then I'll hit you and we can show our fighting spirit" spots that have plagued wrestling ever since. I hate that shit. Other than that, you have some fumbling and rolling around that is neither interesting nor realistic and some good exchanges. Sasaki's clotheslines are lousy (as are Kawada's), but his kicks are surprisingly good. There's some very intricate psychology here, which prefigures the Kawada/Tenryu Triple Crown match later in the month: Kawada doesn't respond well to getting punched right in his damn head (from a kayfabe standpoint; Kawada's the best punched-in-his-damn-head seller ever). Would this get four stars from anyone if it weren't a landmark interpromotional match in front of a molten hot crowd? The Tenryu match had the same philosophy and head-punch psychology and was much better.
  21. William Bologna
    But it didn't kill their business immediately. You'd think 80% of the roster, including all the champions, bailing would have, but they sold out (or at least claim to have sold out) the next three Budokan shows. Mike Rotundo in a main event sold out Budokan. Had 'em hanging from the rafters. Kawada, Tenryu, and Muto on top could draw. It wasn't a sellout every time, but pre-split AJPW wasn't doing that either. Hashimoto vs Arashi in 2003 sold out, and I don't even know who Arashi is. Things got bad in late 2003, but that was more than three years after the split. Something killed their business, but it wasn't the split.
  22. William Bologna
    How bad was the split for AJPW's business actually? They continued running Budokan for a few years and reported good attendance (I have no idea how reliable those numbers are). They even ran a Tokyo Dome show in 2001 - can you imagine today's AJPW doing that? At a glance, it doesn't look like they turned into an "indy" until 04-05. Maybe it wasn't Misawa and Kobashi leaving that hurt the promotion. Maybe it was Tenryu.
  23. William Bologna
    Kawato's great. He's got a great dropkick, he throws better elbows than Okada, and he's got this really expressive over-enthusiastic body language. Like, he's always in a hurry and when he changes directions his body keeps going in the wrong direction. He's like a puppy on a hardwood floor. He and Desperado have the normal young lion shows his fighting spirit match, and it works. Maybe it's Desperado's timing or maybe it's Kawato or maybe it was just a great crowd, but they are into the comebacks. This was a perfect young lion match and the highlight of what wound up being a pretty fun show. I'm not going to make claims for any match but this one, but it was an enjoyable two hours. Red Shoes got to ref his son's first match, there was a guy pretending to be a dinosaur, and you didn't have to worry about anyone going 40 minutes and ending their career.
  24. William Bologna
    Normally during a Tokyo Dome juniors match, the crowd sits on its hands and waits for the highspots. Liger and Dragon knew that going in, so they subverted the audience's expectations by building a match not around highspots but around Ultimo Dragon's fuckups. Just some next-level psychology right here. It really changes the way you think about wrestling.
  25. William Bologna
    I loved this show even though everything except the Michinoku Pro match was terrible. The pre-show had a Dudleys/Eliminators/House of Pain hype video that I remember being pretty great. (I found a version on YouTube, but it's not the right one. I'm very particular when it comes to forgotten House of Pain singles accompanied by wrestling highlights.) One more fond memory: after Joel Gertner took a Total Elimination, they go back to Joey Styles, who says something like, "Someone call Joel Gertner's mother and tell her her little boy's not coming home . . . *looks away from the camera* *looks back at the camera* . . . EVER!"
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