squidlad

Pretty darn good angle all things considered. I normally give the highest amount of credit to Mid South for taking the time to set up angles in advance, but even they might built an angle for four or five weeks at most. This Savage and Crush angle was set up all the way back in June and finally paid off in late October. A fairly remarkable clarity of vision for this company.

Sareee vs Syuri from yesterday's Stardom show was super intense with a lot of relentlessly angry submission work. An unexpected step up from their 30 minute TLD in Shinjuku.

A match for the World Jr. Heavyweight Championship, which took place during Crockett's 'Championship Challenge Series' on TBS in 1985. Royal and Brown are two job guys wrestling for a title that was never properly featured on television. I have no idea what possessed them to give Royal and Brown 17 minutes to wrestle but they did and it's really good. Flair does colour commentary and he puts them both over really well. These two guys had no push whatsoever and their mechanics are awesome, which really speaks to the depth of talent at the time. Pretty much all the in-between moments are better than what you would see in the equivalent match today. *** 1/2

I believe this is the first Curt Hennig match from Portland we have on tape. It was slightly over a year into Curt's professional career and he already looks like a finished product with incredible grace of movement, timing and crispness. This was a great match followed by a great angle and has me very excited to see the rest of Curt's run in Portland and his feud with Buddy Rose. Watch the tape long enough to see Rose's killer promo afterwards. ****

Great, unheralded match, unfortunate to have occured long after NOAH's peak but before the proliferation of Japanese wrestling on streaming sites. Akiyama and Sugiura do some classic wizardry here with spots that look like they should knock either man unconscious. Akiyama does a great job eating strike after strike after strike and selling his way back into the fight. This goes a long way to getting a half full Ariake Coliseum into the match, because as you can tell from the opening minutes, they weren't exactly blowing the roof off the rafters. It's a twenty five minute match but I never got close to wanting them to wrap it up. The match keeps escalating until they arrive at an absolute mother of a finish. **** 1/4

Terrific match between two star level wrestlers: One newly crystalized as the iconic performer he would continue to be for the next fifteen years, the other still only part of the way there and without the pathos that would later define him. They move like superheroes in the ring, with lighting speed and confidence. Their punches, kicks, lariats thrown with the fullest extent of their limbs, their facial expressions and body movements amplified for the people in the cheap seats. 2007 was potentially NJPW's worst ever financial year but Goto and Tanahashi were determined to draw money. There's some great escalation in the last few minutes with Tanahashi getting dropped on his head. It's sold like a legitimate injury until Goto goes for the attack again and gets a succession of near falls. He comes a hair away from winning the title and it's incredible to think this company didn't pull the trigger on Goto until eighteen years later. Tanahashi eventually wins by returning to his strategy of targeting the left leg, which he had been doing throughout the match. I don't know what the mostly loathed days of 2014 WWE did to inspire such confidence in its road agents but regardless, the above suggestion is one of the more absurd things I've ever read here, which would actually cover some ground. It's a classically structured match. The newer challenger is put over as being strong as an oxe but lacking in-ring IQ, which will surely come in the next few years. I tend to see this match as the beginning of the modern NJPW main event, as it features two of the major stars from the upcoming boom period, with the match layout and length that would define that era. Goto would refine his act in later years but as a first attempt this was a huge success. **** 1/4.

Finlay works a miracle by carrying green as grass 2006 Bobby Lashley to a good sixteen minute match (thirteen minutes shown). There's no room for fancy stuff here like the previous week's KOTR qualifier against Benoit. Finlay works a utilitarian match, grinding Lashley down with awesome looking heel offence and building the entire thing around anticipation for Lashley's comeback. Even when Lashley does get his few seconds of big power moves he still clearly lacks confidence in what he's doing. The guy should not have been on TV this early. Regardless though the finish rocks with Lashley just eating a chairshot and spearing Finlay for the win. *** 1/4

One positive aspect of WWE and their decades of misguided decisions is that it gives you plenty of things to write about. One is not often short of an interesting angle to review a match from and in the case of Daniel Bryan vs Sheamus we have a match taking place during a historic instance of fan backlash. Long story short, WWE's audience during the early 2010s had been reduced to a hardcore few. Hardcore audiences tend to favour workhorses over 'manufactured' stars and so at Wrestlemania 28 the audience spectacularly rejected Bryan's 18 second loss to Sheamus. This booking disaster precipitated a babyface turn for Bryan, and Sheamus, while never reaching anywhere near Roman Reigns' level of crowd spurning, did recieve boos and was eventually turned heel after what is generally considered to be a failed babyface run. So this is the enviroment these two wrestlers are walking into. In one corner we have a guy who should obviously be the babyface and yet he is the heel. He is far more popular than his opponent and is more naturally sympathetic. In the other corner we have a guy who should obviously be the heel and yet he is the babyface. He is far more physically intimidating than his opponent and is not well liked by the crowd. How can they navigate such a backwards dynamic? Well, one of the wrestlers happens to be one of the greatest performers of a generation, so they navigate it pretty well. Bryan makes sure to do nothing cool. He is a nasty shit-heel throughout this whole match. The crowd wants to pop for Bryan's offence but he doesn't give it to them. Instead, Sheamus is left to do all the cool moves and the crowd, wanting to react to something, are maneuvered into reacting for them. On paper this sounds like another misfire but it works because Bryan has enough time on this occasion to build a story that makes sense. He can't get Sheamus in the Lebell Lock so he repeatedly kicks Sheamus in the arm until the referee calls for the DQ. Sheamus is then left in a time tested, sympathy-getting scenario: Trying to fight with an injured limb against an opponent determined to exploit it. He sells it quite well all the way to the finish. It's an expert performance from Bryan and wisely, he nevers slips into out-and-out cheating. It would be tempting to throw the kitchen sink at a project like Sheamus but an unpopular babyface overcoming 'too much' adversity is a recipe for disaster, plus it gives this match some much needed legitimacy. There's some real ferocity here, which stood out during one of WWE's lightest in ring periods ever. Sheamus struggles and scraps like he never had before, including a moment where he tries to rake Bryan's face in order to escape from a nasty arm bar. Bryan succeeds though in 'hyper extending' Sheamus' arm. I appreciate it when wrestlers have to fight in order to execute moves. In the long term, this match was not successful as it did not change the trajectory of Daniel Bryan or Sheamus' careers. The crowd was determined to love Bryan and Sheamus, while later establishing himself as an underrated workhorse, would certainly never become the secondary top babyface that WWE wanted. But on this night, with one of the toughest assignments in wrestling, both men put on a match that no one could reject. ****1/2

I don't understand the hype for this match at all. Eighty per cent of it is Randy Orton slowly working over a handcuffed John Cena. The possibility of Cena ever saying 'I quit' are zero so there's only one way the match will ever end. Handcuffs are one of the most ill advised props in professional wrestling because they're awkward to get on + off and are often illogical in how they are used. Here Randy cuffs one of Cena's arms to the top rope, which is fine. Later though, he frees his trapped opponent so he can drape Cena's cuffed arms over the ring post and beat him with a kendo stick. Why? He could have done that when Cena was cuffed to the rope. Yes it's a better visual but it also makes less sense. The finale of the match involves a fight over the handcuffs and Cena choking Orton with the metal chain. I was quite sick of the handcuffs by this point as they had been the focal point of almost the entire match. This was another not-great match between two wrestlers who had no chemistry and yet were matched together many times. ** 1/2

High quality WWE style Last Man Standing match. Obviously since there's no blood and reduced violence overall, the only way these things can work is by upping the ante on big bumps, which is what happens here. I'm grateful that we are not asked to watch regular offence being sold for nine counts. Instead Edge and Cena establish that neither man can hit their signature moves without being countered, so they go straight into the elaborate high spots: Both men take bumps off the steel steps, Edge catches Cena with a spear coming off the top rope, Cena AA's Edge into the crowd (very well executed spot involving local wrestlers), Cena bulldogs Edge onto production equipment and Big Show chokeslams Cena into a gimmicked spotlight for the finish. Neither wrestler 'takes the piss' with the referee counts, rightly allowing the length of the counts to escalate, and leaving the big 9.5 second fakeouts until the finishing stretch. Edge milks the count off a top rope attitude adjustment to a tremendous reaction from the crowd. Edge and Cena put over their exhaustion during the closing minutes with some quite good 'wobbly leg' selling. By the time of the finish I could certainly buy both men being completely drained. ****

This had a suspiciously high rating on Cagematch for a Nia Jax match, especially for one that occured during the cold era of 2017 Raw. And yet, it's not undeserved. This is some hard hitting Big Wrestler vs Small Wrestler action. There are a couple of nasty spots owing to Nia's recklessness, which will occasionally add to a match, as they do here. This match was a bit of a system shock, having become accustomed to modern WWE, with its crowd sweetening and mid-match monologues. None of that here. Just a hot Boston crowd who were genuinely into the action and decent commentary from an announce team I have hated in other times. Really quite taken aback by how good this was. ****

Let's call this a 'low four' due to lack of attempts to lock on the spinning toe hold (despite setting it up earlier in the match) or any serious attempt from either man to win during the last four minutes. The main body of the match though is really good with some of the best limb work of the entire 1990s. Douglas keeps coming up with new ways to torture Funk's arm, while Funk keeps finding new comebacks only to be shut down once again. Funk even blades his arm to sell the damage. It's really great stuff. ****

Excellent, passionate brawling with really good escalation of violence in the last couple of minutes. The Savage and Santana house show series started off pretty restrained but they found a groove with each other and the blowoff was easily their best match. ****

Kent Walton describes this as a preliminary match, which alludes to the incredible depth of talent joint promotions had at the time. This is a really good, friendly contest between two of JPs more athletic wrestlers. There's some good babyface grappling such as Moser and Veider both attempting a chicken wing and voluntarily letting their opponents off the hook when they couldn't lock it in. I enjoyed both men struggling hard to get out of holds, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding but only after maximum effort. *** 3/4

What a match and what a finish. The crowd were not particularly hyped when these two squared up but they got the match so over that by the end the crowd were begging for a rematch. This has to be the most effective count out finish in the history of wrestling. To begin with a match that was not especially hot and take it to a place where the audience is demanding these two get back in the ring and wrestle, that can't be considered anything but an unbelivable success. *****