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tim

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  1. tim
    I liked this a lot. Of course it was ridiculous, but it was fun. This Rock/Mankind feud sure has a lot of memorable moments. Vince was awesome on commentary, transitioning between his evil boss character and WWF spokesman commentary role. A nice end to January 1999 which has been one hell of a month.
  2. tim
    This was looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong. I really didn't care for this. Some beginning stuff was cool and the first big dive train was nice but after that it sort of fell apart. They didn't do enough to differentiate different sections of the match so once they got out of the early stuff it start to feel really monotonous before too long. There's also some ugly mistimed spots that don't gel too well in a match that's all about good looking offense. I was really waiting for the match to be over by the first elimination. Some of the early end stuff with the last two guys was good to start off but even that went on too long. 45 minutes in total and it felt that way.
  3. tim
    This isn't just indie guys doing a great job paying tribute to southern tags, this IS a classic southern tag. I liked their 98 match a lot and this is more polished and with a better crowd. The crowd really is incredible, both in volume and the visuals of them jumping around going crazy. Early face shine stuff was very good and Helms' assisted dive to the outside was a huge face spot. The Hardys worked heel this time and their heat segment was very good with some nice comeback teases from Helms. The end was great with the Hardys fairly quickly cutting off Maverick's hot tag, having the match won if not for a downed ref, then attacking the ref who comes down to count after Helms kicks out leading to them getting their comeuppance with a chair shot and a big splash to end it.
  4. tim
    This was hilarious. Given his reputation as a serious technical wrestler Bret has great range as a promo. You can complain about this promo making El Dandy a joke to most lesser-informed smarks all you want but as a stand alone promo it was great.
  5. tim
    What is it with Austin Driving Things?
  6. tim
    I actually liked this match quite a bit. It packed in a lot of stuff with lots of bells and whistles and stayed entertaining throughout. The chairshots at the end are just horrific though. But for better or for worse (well, for worse) they go toward making this an instantly memorable match. This is the kind of match where if you didn't see the PPV and saw some of the highlights and reactions on RAW the next night you really felt like you missed out on something big. Aside from the chairshots at the end being totally irresponsible I don't have any complaints about this at all really.
  7. tim
    What's better for a hardcore wrestling fan than seeing an awesome Sabu vs. One Man Gang house show match from 1999? Short, fun match with a nice big guy/little guy dynamic. Both guys looked really good and there were some nice spots, I especially loved the ref grabbing the fork while Gang cocks back for a shit and Sabu taking the opportunity to hit a kick to the knee that sends Gang toppling forward. Good ending and Gang sells post-match like he's been beaten half to death.
  8. tim
    Another great match. Han was just a master here. Loved his vicious arm takedowns in the beginning. There's this great spot where Han temporarily breaks his clasp while defending against an arm bar to move his left arm to the other side of Kanehara's leg to counter out of it. There's another particularly great spot where Han beautifully counters out of a knee bar leading into a great struggle over an arm bar. Ending minutes are cool where Kanehara tries to transition it into striking but Han keeps trying to take it to the mat, ending with Han countering a kick into an ankle lock for the win. Kanehara looked good here but Han showed why he's an all time great on the mat.
  9. tim
    Man, I'm worlds apart from Loss on this one. I don't know if it's as GOOD as some as a few of the other January matches but this one grabbed me the most out of them all so far. This was AWESOME. A good rudo mugging is one of my favorite things in wrestling and this was a damn good one. Lots of viciousness, Black Warrior and Blue Panther joining together to ram Atlantis into the turnbuckle was awesome, as was Warrior laying waste to Felino with some knee strikes on the apron. Rudos get DQed for beating on Charles who does a great looking early blade job. The technico come back is very climactic and worked well, with Atlantis and Felino really taking it to the other two on the outside while Charles draws blood against Wagner as revenge inside. Then the technicos get DQed for mask ripping. Atlantis is great here, shoving down the ref in response to the DQed and throwing some great looking punches. They bust out the highspots for the third fall but don't lose the hate or energy. Felino's top rope razors edge is a holy shit spot and I loved Atlantis whipping Charles into a big tope. Ending ruled too. Talk about a hidden gem, this totally ruled. I thought the structure was fine and that it was perfectly done for a wild brawl.
  10. tim
    I think the 92, 93, 94 and 95 matches are all significantly better, at least going by memory for some of those, but this was no doubt a great, great match. I liked how Misawa's knee actually became a bigger deal as the match went on, and Kawada's spinning low kicks to it looked great. You get your standard (awesome) Misawa/Kawada style of hard-hitting match that really does 'wrestling as a sport' in a way that no other match-up quite does. So much of what they do makes sense in ways other matches don't try to think of and the selling is great. Loved Kawada trying to explode up after a Tiger suplex but collapsing half way, and another great spot in Misawa toppling into the referee after eating a gemengiri. The Ganso bomb is of course sick and the crowd responds huge for it. I actually like the left-field ending with the brainbuster, it's not a usual finisher for Kawada but Misawa had sustained so much damage beforehand that it did the trick here. Also interesting how few of their finishers they threw out in general here.
  11. tim
    Yeah, this promo actually makes me excited about the prospect of a 1999 Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair match. Wonderfully delivered and really sold every aspect of the match up as best as it could be done. And of course the aside to cajole some guy in the crowd was classic too.
  12. tim
    Yep, awesome stuff. Shane especially is great in these.
  13. tim
    They really should've thought more about Rey's motivation here. Rey wanting to keep on the LWO colors makes less than zero sense. They could've spun it into some pride thing, have Rey say he didn't want to put on the colors but now that he has he's only going to remove them if it's his choice, not because some bigger group comes along and makes them. Saying that they're his colors and symbolize his pride after the angle where he was forced to join against his will is pretty dumb. Rey/Luger sounds cool though.
  14. tim
    The ending of the match itself was good with Goldberg throwing up the cattle proder to hit the spear and following it with a great looking Jackhammer. The Bigelow/Goldberg stuff was great in late 98 but at this point with the NWO reuinion, Goldberg's streak broken, so much stuff going on, it all just gets too confused and you don't know how it fits into anything. Then Hall stuns them both to go off the air. Just weird.
  15. tim
    This definitely started to feel more and more pro style as it went on. Opening mat stuff was very good and Yoshida was busting out some cool submissions throughout the match. Pro style offense started making its way into the match fairly gradually which was cool, for a while feeling like a regular pro style match with a heavy emphasis on submissions. By the end of the match it felt stylistically totally pro style, thanks in part to still very much having that go-go-go nonstop Joshi pace with quick transitions and essentially zero downtime. Which made the match feel longer than it was because there was just so much stuff, but which isn't necessarily a criticism here. I really liked the part toward the end where Akino gets some big forearm shots in leading to a nearfall. Ending kinda comes out of nowhere. I liked this match a lot and it had a unique feel but the pace made it feel kind of monotone, just move after move with no real structure and minimal selling. I probably just need to get used to watching Joshi again. Still a very good match.
  16. tim
    So Sid WAS some kind of smark darling right? ECW fans love him, the Garden cheered him over Shawn in 96. Pretty funny knowing that a guy like him would never be a smark favorite today. Sid's jeans look is good and boy does he manhandle Skull here. The botched chokeslam to the outside was something and the powerbombs looked great.
  17. tim
    Another incredible match, this is shaping up to be some week for wrestling. The big headbutt drawing blood of Shizaki was perfect since the heabutt had become a theme in the match almost immediately, with pretty much the first thing in the match being Hayabusa blocking a headbutt from Honda. Shizaki then gets worked over a bit and its good stuff with the blood adding to it. Hayabusa's hot tag is awesome and his first run of offense is great, including a real holy shit dive over the guardrail onto Izumida. The home stretch was fantastic with some neat stuff in there and still playing heavily on the headbutt theme which was cool. Great ending. This is neck and neck with that Battlearts tag for MOTY right now.
  18. tim
    Great match and with a really cool, unique feel that's different from an NJPW juniors match. Ogawa is awesome in this and defintely adds to the uniqueness. The structure of the match is really good with some nice opening work leading to Kakihara getting control before he blasts his ankle on the ring post which is a very convincing-looking transition. I liked his comeback a lot too with the inverted atomic drop into the three big kicks that he sold his leg for. Ending is really dramatic and cool with Ogawa getting a big run of roll-up near falls that the crowd got really hot for and the very ending sequence was just great, Kakihara pulls off a really cool armbar takedown only for Ogawa to pull the ref down onto him to break it up. Ogawa charges at Kakihara but eats the post to the shoulder to set up an arm bar in the middle of the ring -- it looks like Ogawa is getting his comeuppace but Ogawa quickly turns it into a pin for the three. Very distinct match and very good.
  19. tim
    I think there might actually be something to this, but with heels being rare. Like, only a couple heels on the roster compared to far more faces. Mostly you can have the Japan dynamic with everyone being cheered more or less and feuds based more on competition than animosity. Already that's not so great a change. I mean look at the Dusts/Usos feud for example. The Dusts are nominally the heels but you'd hardly notice. They don't cut heel promos, they haven't really done too many dastardly things to the Usos ... you don't get a sense these guys want to kill each other. Does the heel/face dynamic add ANYTHING to that feud more than it would be if it were just treated like a competition between two teams? Not really. But then have a couple BIG heels on the roster who are partly especially distinguished just because they ARE heels. A guy like Rusev would hold that role. You can have your wink-to-the-smarks heel too. I don't think we're at a stage where no heel can be booed because we've seen heels get strong heat lately. Just not most of them. Maybe what we are passed is a model where heels are accepted to be hees just because and fans feel mentally comfortable that any given feud should have one guy they actively want to boo.
  20. tim
    There was a thread a couple years ago on this topic that I remember reading and I think now is a good time to reexamine it. With the weak Network performance, creative stagnation, widespread discontent and the Punk podcast controversy WWE at this moment at least, and for some since all the injuries plagued them this year, really feel like a weary giant ripe to be tipped over. BUT, how possible is it? Could another wrestling promotion compete with WWE? How could it be possible? What would they need? Who could do it, what would be the minimum necessary requirements? What's the most possible scenario? Someone with some clout getting some serious investers behind them with enough money to poach a few guys with name value from WWE and sit on them until their no compete runs out? If Vince McMahon really is a millionaire who should be a billionaire that says there's hundreds of millions of dollars in pro wrestling left on the table for SOMEONE to make. I feel like there are a lot of people out there willing to watch a pro wrestling product that interests them and seems hot who aren't watching regularly right now. But is the market really there to feul competition? Is WWE hegemony over pro wrestling so much that a competitor won't be taken seriously? Could a smaller company rise up and challenge them? TNA failed miserably but how much better could competent management have done in their place? Say TNA were run by some business savy people with a great booker with a clear vision, could their show have ever been rivalling RAW in ratings? What would it take for an indy to reach that level? I've got more questions than answers here but I'd like to see some takes on it. It's something I've been thinking about a bit lately with how stale WWE and a lot of the wrestling landscape in general is. I'd sure love to see some real competition come along somehow but I don't think anyone's holding their breath.
  21. tim
    Incredible, incredible match. One of the best Battlearts ever had. This is one of those Battlearts matches that absolutely perfectly blends the shoot style with the pro style, giving us equal parts of both but in a way that doesn't feel like a combination of two different styles but something totally seemless and distinct of its own. The heel work from Ikeda and Yone was great, especially Ikeda: loved that spot where he's kicking at Ishikawa while Ishikawa is crawling to the ropes in a keylock. Cool that Otsuka kind of takes the face in peril role and works two segments like that. Ikeda and Ishikawa always feels like the big deal when they're in the ring together or facing off in any way, but I think my favorite part of the match was the Otsuka/Ikeda section that featured a tombstone and a missed moonsault. One of my favorite individual spots here has Ishikawa having taken some big moves with some KO teases and then Ikeda tagging in and going to hit a big running spinning heel kick but Ishikawa counters it into a leg lock. Ending is awesome with the Dragon Suplex having been teased a bunch of times in the final minutes before Otsuka finally connects and murders Yone with four straight for the KO. Made even better by Ikeda getting down and trying to cheer Yone on but Yone collapsing back down while trying to make it to his feet again. Definite MOTYC.
  22. tim
    Very good work here. It's not one of the high tier AJPW tags and doesn't really have a particularly interesting structure, dynamic or transcendently great moments or exchanges, it's just damn good All Japan style action. Not something that's gonna stick in my mind I don't think when reflecting on the best matches of the year but it's great work.
  23. tim
    Sooooo bad. Just awful, all-time-worst-shit stuff. They were doing enough stuff very, very right during this period that they could afford to get away with over wrought garbage like this but you're not going to convince me this Undertaker "sports entertainment"-to-the-nth-degree-and-beyond stuff was at all a net benefit for the product.
  24. tim
    Great segment. Roided up Vince entering was awesome as was his celebration, Chyna's surprise entrance was great and the crowd went wild for her hauling off on the stooges. And then Ausin shows up to a monster pop to screw Vince over and get us back to Austin and Vince as numbers one and two. The build to the Rumble has been really cool so far for the Rumble itself and the Rock/Foley title match, they're really keeping the fans on their toes.
  25. tim
    The NWO vs. luchadors sure would've been an awesome angle.
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