squidlad

Currently watching the 20 disc William Regal ISO and my knee jerk reaction to Regal placing 21st on the 2016 list is becoming more and more justified. It's an absurdly high ranking and one of two faults with 2016 (the other being Inoki's absence). I read through old Regal match threads and it's like people were purposefully watching these matches with the narrowest goggles possible in order not to see their faults. Such as Regal killing PPV crowds with punishingly slow paced matches, sapping the crowd's enthusiasm with about three cutoff spots too many, working like he's going an hour broadway in matches with a ten minute time limit and barely getting out of the headlock stage before the time expires. I like Regal. He was a great personality with great fundamentals and when all is said and done I may end up ranking him. But 21st greatest wrestler of all time was insane. We need a reality check.

A tight, no nonsense match from two venerable upper-midcard bruisers. I particularly liked Arn's comeback spot which was just a series of stomps to Regal's mid section. He worked the exact same way he did when he was a bag guy but got cheered for it. There was unbelievable sustained heat from the Center Stage crowd who threw the preverbial babies in the air when Arn hit the spinebuster. They came just a few seconds shy of a perfectly timed finish. After hitting the spinebuster, Arn had to lie still without making the cover to allow the seven seconds left on the clock to drain away. The referee danced about the two men in a frankly silly manner before counting two and calling for the time limit draw. They just didn't quite nail the TLD and made it look a bit obvious. *** 3/4

Some great looking work in a match that stamped out the crowd's enthusiasm in the second half. They went too long and did too many hope spots. The crowd had enough energy to react to Steamboat getting cut off once but after Regal cut him off for the third or fourth time the crowd lost interest and the 'Steamboat' chants died down. There was simply too much grinding heel work for a crowd that didn't particularly care about Regal and just wanted to see some babyface fire. What I've described above is an issue prevelant in many of Regal's early PPV matches, they try too hard to milk heat that isn't actually there. Regal's character and promos are over but his matches aren't. Consequently he works far better within the confines of a 10 minute TV match than he does in long PPV matches. Despite all this, the work in this match was great, it is Ricky Steamboat and Steve Regal after all. And even though they lost the crowd half way through, they did pull off an awesome finish.

Great, old school work, with awesome fundumentals and awesome heat. The match is only ten minutes long and it's nonstop fire for those ten minutes. My favourite Regal match of 1993 so far and my favourite Regal vs Steamboat match. *** 3/4

Bret was among my favourite wrestlers when I was younger but I had not watched his acclaimed matches for a long time. So when I sat down to watch them, I did so slightly nervously, thinking they wouldn't hold up. My fresh take about Bret is that he was an average house show worker. This is where the criticism of him always doing the same moves in sequence is valid. I could type out a Bret Hart house show match right now and it would be 90% accurate to any match you could find. The flipside of that is that he was the best PPV worker in the world with a number of TV gems. He never had the same match twice and did spots that I've never seen before. Bret greatly benefitted from being percieved as a guy who could be beat and thusly his matches are full of emotionally charged struggle to score the win, in an era where the old heirarchy had collapsed and seemingly anyone could be elevated. Bret Hart's matches are also much more interesting than most people give him credit for. Bret is a really strange wrestler by the standards of early 90s United States. First of all, he did his best work against other babyfaces - in a time when the face/heel dynamic was still locked into place with rare exceptions. Secondly, due to him working in a greatly diminished roster, often against people with no main event credibility, he was given the very difficult assignment of making heels look good but not so good they get cheered. He did this by structuring matches to be purely competitive, deemphasizing the heel aspect all together, but with just enough meanness on the side of the heel so that sympathy doesn't spill over. The Shawn Michaels Survivor Series match is an example of this. It's a bizarre match psychology wise for the time but Bret gets it over and makes it work. There's no interference and no cheating. Bret delicately threads the needle, in front of fans trained on Hulk Hogan style main events and makes Shawn Michaels look like a superior wrestler. In the end Shawn emerges, still a heel, but with new-found credibility. I'm very pleased with how Bret's footage is holding up and he will rank high for me.

in my opinion, 'limb selling' is one of the most overrated talking points in our particular corner of match reviews. I think some reviewers latched on to it because it's the most visually obvious aspect of psychology and took it far more seriously than wrestlers themselves. Name a 'great' wrestler and I can find you an example of them 'blowing off limb selling'. Everyone does it but for some reason a few get unfairly penalized for it. It's a writing crutch and I think it would be beneficial for reviewers who've been overly focused on 'limb selling' to put it out of their minds for a while and find other things to critique. Really, just try it out as an experiment. I've read too many reviews that are along the lines of 'this was good, that was good but he didn't sell the leg. F.' and It's unsatisying to me as a reader. I speak from experience because I had this exact problem a number of years ago. I was obsessing about selling the arm and selling the leg, while ignoring the myriad of other things that are crucial for actually getting a live crowd into a match. Once I trained myself out of this habit, I was able to develop new appreciations for things that occur in a match.

A very good, unheralded match that showcased the depth this roster had at the time. Toshiyo Yamada was fantastic in this, believably taking the fight to Kong and delivering swift, brutal violence upon Hasegawa. There's one spot where Yamada whiffs on a kick over Kong's head and simply whips her leg back in the other direction to catch Kong flush. It's a neat little moment showing great versatility. ****

A great class this year. One that clears up a huge bottleneck, broadens the scope of viable candidates and inducts a number of deserving people. Next year's HOF is going to be a lot more fun to talk about without the same old debates getting dredged up. A complete win all around. Cima and Shingo getting in is good as lucharesu has been under represented in the HOF. It's an influential style that can still be observed today at a high level. In my opinion there should have been at least one more person responsible for its proliferation in the hall, apart from just Ultimo.

Fantastic, hour long broadway in which I did not feel the time pass. Dory was a great, dirty bastard in this match, taking every chance to apply illegal holds and stomp on Inoki's fingers. The crowd was incensed in a way you don't often hear from Japanese crowds in this era, making their elation at Inoki's comebacks all the more delightful. ****1/2

Tenryu at the age of 55 puts on one last classic. The match is just under twelve minutes long but they execute everything with brutal precision. Going by the reviews I assumed this match was going to be a case of the 'young punk getting nerfed'. Not at all. Kenta beats the shit out of Tenryu during the last few minutes and Tenryu does a great job getting whipped and selling the difficulty in getting Kenta to stay down. It's the usual pro's pro job from the old man and I shouldn't have expected less. ****1/4.

This deserves a lot more love. Between the average review settling somewhere around 'quite good' and my understanding that Scott was hurt going into this match, I expected some fool proof, fundamentally sound work and not much more. But I was incorrect, these two guys had a match that was both logically cohesive and mechanically inventive. I counted three spots I had never seen before now: The bump off the Irish whip in which Bret slides under the turnbuckle and hits his ribs off the corner ring post, the second rope suplex counter where Bret rolls off Razor's back and hits a suplex of his own and the Razor's Edge counter into a backslide. Bret impresses me with his ability find good comprimises within the realities of 1993 WWF. The comprimise with Shawn Michaels at Survivor Series was to make Shawn look good but not so good he gets cheered. The comprimise here is to work a match that makes sense coming off a heated angle but is appropriate for the bloodless, child friendly product. You can't have the street fight you'd want to have so what do you do instead? What Bret does instead is start the match off hot, unloading a flurry of punches at Hall but then gets cut off with a brutal looking spot that leaves him hurt for the rest of the match. They can then settle into the normal tenor of a WWF title match without underselling the bad blood between the two men. Another great match in Bret's fairly underrated 1992-93 title run. Including this match I have three matches at four stars or more and another at three and three quarters. This is surely the best non-gimmick singles match of Scott Hall's career. ****

A fantastic, long, classy NWA style title match. The 1992 WWF crowd doesn't know what to do with this at first but Bret inches them into it during Michaels' heat phase with two cleverly planned hope spots. By the time Bret starts making a comeback they're totally invested. Shawn and Bret then proceed to trade counters and reversals with beautiful execution before kicking things into fifth gear with Bret hitting the floor outside. This is a really nice escalation for the last few minutes as Michaels comes dangerously close to pinning a badly hurt Bret. If the goal was to make Shawn look as credible as possible without pulling the trigger, they pull it off here. There's no cheating from Michaels, he just takes advantage of an imperiled opponent. In a great finish Shawn succumbs to his lack of his experience and puts himself in a position to be caught with the sharpshooter. Bret Hart was really firing on all cylinders in 1992 and out of his three PPV matches that year this is the one where he displays the highest amount of ingenuity. He got an audience trained on Hogan style main events to accept a different type of match, while getting himself over as a fighting champion and making an upper midcard heel look a potential world title holder. We get a clear look here at Bret's vision for WWF title matches, and even though it wouldn't last, what a lovely vision it was. **** 1/2.

By some distance (about twelve years) the earliest 'great' match I have seen. Love that finish of just smelling blood in the water and viciously attacking your opponent's weak point until you've won. ****

Miu Watanabe and Shoko Nakajima had a terrific match at TJPW's Korakuen show today. I was expecting it to be really good since Shoko is TJPW's best worker in my opinion and Watanabe is trying to cement herself as the new top star. It ended up being a candidate for the best singles match in company history. Their grappling was off the charts good. Apparently they practically live at the dojo so it was like a public demonstration of the mat work they've been doing in private. It was super tight and purposeful with Shoko trying every which way to lock Miu in a hold or score a flash pin. Later she started working Miu's neck and Miu kept up the selling throughout. I have to periodically remind myself that Miu Watanabe wasn't a pro wrestling fan, didn't know what wrestling was and only got in through an idol tryout. She's a natural if I've ever seen one.

A fantastic match that is unfortunately destined to sit in near invisibility for the rest of time, like practically all US indie wrestling after the pandemic. Makabe and Wyatt do some of the best mat based storytelling I've seen from the 2020s short of Nomura vs Abe. They grab holds which lead to clever counters which lead to the match escalating in intensity but it never feels 'floaty'. They struggle for everything they get including Makabe having to absolutely maul Wyatt to the ground in order to lock on the cattle mutilation. A very clear indie MOTYC ****1/2.

This was truly and honestly one of the most beastly matches I have ever seen. Tenryu lays in some of the stiffest kicks and chops of his whole career (and think of the ground that covers) and follows it up with some gnarly chair shots and even dives! And the dives actually look pretty good because they're just this reckless old man throwing his entire bodyweight onto his opponent and hoping the landing doesn't suck. Araya takes a mean kick to the face late in the match and emerges seconds later with a bloody nose, it's such an extreme level of violence. Both guys killed themselves for an end result that probably wasn't worth it but I give them all the kudos in the world. ****1/2.

Would have loved this to be slightly longer but as it stands it's all action and all violence for 10 blistering minutes. Phenomenal bumping from both guys and crazy athleticism in particular from Vader. Crowd goes wild for every moment of offense. ****

I am raving about the Ultimate Triad Match between Shingo Takagi and Aaron Henare. A remarkably coherent 38 match for someone with the skill level of Henare. Shingo deserves huge praise for this. The best worker in the company at the moment.

Tight, no nonsense work and Impeccable selling from both men. I particularly loved Steamboat's selling off the piledriver, wincing like his neck has been compressed rather than the total KO we usually see. I loved everything bell-to-bell but it felt like they left a fair amount on the table for the rematch. ****1/4. I feel like the finish has gotten a bum rap (possibly owing to the angle setting it up not being included in the 1992 yearbook? I'm not sure), so I'll try to explain it: Earlier on in the show Medusa lures the ninja away (who both here and on TV is a man about a head shorter than Ricky Steamboat) from guarding Steamboat's locker room. He is then presumably set upon by the Dangerous Alliance. Later, just before the introductions of the match, 'the ninja' returns. Steamboat comes out of the locker room and takes one glancing look at him before heading to the ring. After which the fake ninja follows behind Steamboat and spends the entire match with his back to the ring. The answer to 'why didn't Steamboat recognize it was a different person in the costume?' is that Steamboat only got a half second look at him before his match started.