tim
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I totally loved this match. Yamazaki brings a unique feel to the match and both guys have clear strategies; Yamazaki relies on his kicks and is going after the arm, while Muto is after the leg and works on Yamazaki's fingers a bit for good measure, always coming across really nasty while doing so. Both themes are established early on and are important to the match up to the end. Very good mat work in the beginning. Ending stretch is awesome and especially Muto trying to escape the armbar; Yamazaki sure has been bringing it with the come-from-behind armbar finishes this year!
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Fun match with Kojima doing the heavy lifting. It dragged a little bit at some times and there were two awkward spots from Chono, but most of this match was really good and energetic. Ending was a little anti-climactic.
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[1996-08-01-FMW-King of Fight II] W*ING Kanemura vs Masato Tanaka
tim replied to Loss's topic in August 1996
I liked this match a good bit, more than some of the better regarded workrate-focused FMW matches from the 1999 set. These guys got into the action pretty quick and worked a lot of cool spots. Really well-executed match. -
This is my first time watching this whole angle and it is for sure a masterpiece. Everything was executed perfectly and the level of realism is probably unmatched in any other wrestling angle. The whole show felt like it flew totally off the rails in the most unexpected way possible. Such a sense of chaos and a lack of clear knowledge of what happened. Great performances from everyone, no one overacted and everyone got over the situation. You even had the big bump with Rey so that, even though we miss most of the beatdown, we do get a visual sense of the brutality the NWO is now capable of. The fact that last week was sort of a lull in the NWO story makes this an even bigger exclamation point. Strong contender for best wrestling angle ever.
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Big Mark! If only Henry had what he had by the mid/later-2000s from the start.
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Highly stylized promo intended to be cutting edge and cool ... that actually comes across as cutting edge and cool! Now that's rare. They cryptically hint about expanding the NWO, and give you more of a sense of what their goal is and how they're going to go about it.
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Kobashi/Taue is the one pairing of the big four in AJPW that doesn't really have a popularly acclaimed match of the 90s. Well, this is their classic. Truly felt like an epic main event title match, action from bell to bell and they really got over the exhaustion. This was worked really evenly throughout almost the entire match, without really a narrative of either guy getting the advantage for an extended period of time or having some aspect of their game or particular strategy that puts them one up on their opponent. But toward the end Kobashi hits these awesome desperation headbutt thrusts to Taue's stomach, follows it up with a tiger suplex and then a moonsault, and for the next couples minutes it's Kobashi's match until the end. Taue attempts one last big kick but it doesn't have the impact it needs, Kobashi responds immediately with a lariat and a top rope leg drop to the back of his head for the win. Cool, unexpected ending move that still totally felt like it deserved to end the match. I really love how the apron nodawa was teased, and teased hard with Kobashi really struggling out of those attempts, but never paid off. Really got over how devastating the move would have been, and that Kobashi almost surely would have lost if Taue had pulled it off.
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Pretty fun match. Mongo is energetic and not bad overall, but man was that backdrop botch an ugly one. Post-match Sting takes a steep, steep fall in promo quality from last week. Yikes.
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I really enjoy a big-name multi-man tag when it's done well and this one is done well. Great babyface shine early on from everyone, especially Shawn and Vader. Sid is super over and his winding punches look pretty good. Owen and Shawn work an extended stretch and pull out the moves, and I actually liked Owen's rolling cradle and Vince's reaction. Shawn is the face in peril for a while and then gets a great hot tag to Sid, Sid comes in and destorys the heels with chokeslams and Ahmed launches Shawn into a splash on Vader. Lots of action and the babyfaces all get a chance to look good, but Vader still scores the pin to build to Summerslam match.
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Man this is another match I wish went about five minutes longer, this was heading to MOTYC territory fast. Such a great match from the very beginning. Anjo is such a dick and you want to see Tenryu unleash on him, and when he does boy does it deliver. Just great strikes and a feeling of a nasty fight all throughout. The powerbomb into the arm bar with Tenryu following it up with one of the sickest lariats of all time was a beautiful sequence. This is a match that leaves me wanting way more.
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Another really good angle from USWA. Interesting to see Wolfie as champion. Pretty long but Dundee makes it good and his sucker punch to Wolfie ruled.
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Awesome mat work, and this was well on its way to being a great match until the untimely ending. Worked very evenly on the mat with both guys pulling out some really sweet moves; Volk Han trapping Kohsaka's legs while in a kimura and his standing hammerlock were some particular highlights. Very smooth and fast paced, and the stand up spots felt pretty brutal.
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Another great angle. How successful it is is really a testament to the quality of the booking, because, really, WHAT are the WCW guys so worried about again? If this were a WWF invasion angle, Hall and Nash as some kind of "threat" to WCW makes sense, but as it is it really doesn't make sense. But the booking is so good it all works. We finally get a Hogan follow up promo and he more than knocks it out of the park again. Hogan's new look is great, so simple but so distinctly different. Bischoff does a good job actually bothering to explain why the lockeroom isn't emptying to take them out. The mid-carders coming out to surround the ring and the chaos in the announcing to end the show is a great cliffhanger. Man, who was booking this angle week to week? Incredible work.
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I was thinking that this surpasses the February ECW match to be the best Rey/Juvy match of the year so far until the interference. It still might be, but the interference was totally superfluous and just letting them work the finish would have been a lot better. Less purely exhibitiony than some of their other matches, worked more competitively and even some emphasis on selling, with all their spots still looking great.
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This whole this was SO ECW. As a piece of wrestling it's really something from the wrestling to the big angle at the end. All in all, I loved it. As a match is sort of peaked toward the end of the first "fall", losing a bit of steam after that until the big angle. But up to that point I thought it was really, really good as a match. Some rough patches here and there but nothing that detracted from the match I felt. Douglas worked the heel opportunist role really well, and I was wanting to see him get his comeuppance all match. Scorpio is the first one to really take it to him and it's a great moment. Some really cool spots and exchanges, especially Scorpio's kick off the Lionsault. Jericho as champion gets pinned first, sort of a Heyman booking favorite it seems. Douglas and Pitbull on paper seems like the one on one match you'd least want to see of all the combinations, but this match succeeded in making me want to see Pitbull get the chance to take it to Douglas one on one. The angle was really well done and surprising for me, and Francine going through the table vies for biggest pop of the year so far. Cool ending with Pitbull kicking out of a bunch of big moves and the crowd totally behind him before Douglas puts him away. As the culmination of everything going on with the TV title for the last couple months this felt like a really big match, and it really felt like it elevated the TV title.
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Outstanding action as to be expected, but somehow this didn't quite have the spark for me that the truly great AJPW matches do. That's in no way a knock against this match which is excellent by any standard. The story is mostly the same -- Akiyama is the clear #4, Taue and Kawada are a much more cohesive unit, and Misawa has to shoulder a lot of the weight. Although toward the end of the match, it does feel like Akiyama asserts himself a bit more, is able to defend himself from big offense a bit more and contributes more at the end to the victory. The slap exchanges between Akiyama and Kawada/Taue were definitely the highlight of this match. Misawa chips away at Taue with big moves until he can pick up the win with a Tiger Suplex; that Misawa got the pin actually sort of feels like a credit to Akiyama, as Akiyama was able to keep Kawada at bay. I feel like I should rewatch this before ranking it. Watching it I didn't really feel *into* it in the sense of having an active "wow this match fucking rules" response, but thinking back to the action, yeah it did fucking rule. No matter what it would still rank strongly, but I feel I might be somewhat underrating it in my mind right now.
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I'd sure be disappointed with no Hogan follow-up this week if I were a fan watching at the time, but he still looms large over everything. Hall and Nash feel like even bigger stars now. They're definitely Cool Heels now, and the top WCW guys like Sting, Savage sort of already feel lame by comparison.
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Really good promo from Sting. I can't really remember any other particularly good Sting promos, though I can't say I've seen a bunch. Sting says he should have noticed how much of an asshole Hulk was from the beginning, in so many words, which works well in playing off the discontent most felt toward him in his first run this year. Savage's promo is entertaining in a goofy way, which still works for the scenario since it's Savage.
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Really good match. Very compact and well executed, although it is a shame about the two significant blown spots -- it's not even that they were awkward or detracted from the flow of the match, the match just would have been better if they were pulled off right. Malenko's top rope gutbuster was awesome. I liked the ending, it's still a clear clean win for Rey and a good way for a babyface to pick up a win. Feels like a satisfying comeuppance for the heel rather than just stupid, which those heel pick-up-before-the-three-count spots often do.
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The match itself is so overshadowed by the angle, but it was actually really good. The sequence that took Luger out of the match was really cool and energetic. Afterward Sting shows a lot of fire and then we go into Sting as face in peril. It's really great thanks to some really, really excellent commentary and Savage turning in a great apron performance. Savage's hot tag is really good too. The commentary was just great though, really perfect and made this match feel so special. And then the angle. Well, it's on the very short list of contenders for being the greatest angle of all time. Hogan was out of this world great. What a promo. And the crowd reaction. The commentary was again fantastic. Everything about this was perfect. Truly feels earth shattering.
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After seeing these guys wrestle their standard match in Mexico, Japan and ECW it's pretty cool to see them do it on the biggest stage yet by far. And when they get this chance they really knock it out of the park, all their stock spots they pull off spectacularly. I didn't think the work they did in between the spots was all that great, but the spots made up for them and the homestretch was really awesome. Really cool to see the crowd taking to Rey.
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Nash is really coming into his own here. The way they set this up as interrupting the scheduled programming was so good for as simple as it was.
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Damn! I really wanted Fukuoka and Kaoru to win! The structure, selling and roles in this match actually worked to make me feel personally invested in the outcome, which I can't say happens very much when watching 20 year old matches. Kansai starts out as a force of nature with awesome strikes and a monster demeanor. But Fukuoka and Kaoru work more as a cohesive team, and by working together they are slowly able to overcome her, and Kansai is great at selling and getting over her vulnerability. Some really great team spots from Fukuoka and Kaoru. Some of the nearfalls really had me biting. I loved this match.
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Very good match. WWF has had some good TV matches this year and Shawn really is looking good. Jannetty is really good in this match but it does feel weird for the world champion to be having such a competitive match against a guy who feels so much lower on the hierarchy. Long, competitive, pretty work-ratey match with some cool spots. Jannetty's flip off the monkey flip into the clothesline was a great spot. Good decisive finish to make Shawn look strong. Post-match, Jose actually does something!