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ohtani's jacket

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  1. ohtani's jacket
    If you like this then I recommend checking out Sakuraba/Kakihara vs. Lydick/Scott, which is also very good. The Lydick v. Kakihara singles match it builds to is a bit underwhelming, though. Tamura/Lydick vs. Kakihara/Nelson is decent but not as good as the two Sakuraba/Kakihara tags, IMO.
  2. ohtani's jacket
    If you enjoyed this then both of the Chono/Anjoh fights are worth watching, particularly the first one which sets up this tag. Super heated and fun, and more of the same. Possibly the only time I can go along with low blows in a shoot style environment.
  3. ohtani's jacket
    #353 On the plus side, this is the most "lucha" of the lucha matches that have been listed thus far. I think the ref is probably the best thing about this bout. He's exactly the sort of ref you'd expect to be reffing lucha. As for the rest of the bout, I witnessed a more disjointed and uninspired version of the bout that Loss described. I thought it lacked the genius of great lucha and didn't have a single beat I'd describe as a Fuerza Guerrera Moment. Rey vs. Juventud was okay, but they had better matches elsewhere. A draw was a fitting result in this as neither team took the bull by the horns and the whole thing felt like the warm up to the main event for ,me. The rematch is more direct but has even less narrative focus. Granted, it's kind of difficult for me to think of Juventud as Fuerza's son since Fuerza himself seems so ageless. And Fuerza vs. Misterio Sr. doesn't seem like a rivalry as such. That leaves Rey vs. Juvie as age group rivals, and a more important match-up than Fuerza/Misterio Sr, MO. The younger workers deliver here, but they had better singles matches than this and the veteran workers didn't steer the action hard enough, to be fair.
  4. ohtani's jacket
    #370 The first thing I noticed about this was that the file length was 44 mins long. That reminded me of back in the day when you'd order a 3 hour custom comp in EP mode and 44 minutes would take up a huge chunk of your comp. How times have changed. I have no idea whether I've seen this or not, but I do know that I really liked it. Long All Japan matches are an immediate turn off to me but this kept me engrossed for a good 35 minutes. Johnny Ace did an unbelievable job of sustaining his accuracy and level of performance over 30 mins+ , and while Williams didn't look in the best of health compared to his '94 run, he still brought a huge degree of intensity. Probably the best thing about the bout is something that doesn't work in every match in Japan but worked here, and that's the aggression and disrespectful attitude that the Americans brought. There are times when you watch a match like this and the Americans will trash talk and the Japanese wrestlers will ignore them and go through their thought processes, but Williams managed to rile Misawa and get his ire up. That added another wrinkle to All Japan (Misawa vs. Williams, that is) and was in all honesty more meaningful than anything Misawa vs. Hansen ever offered. Not sure I agree with Loss here that the match as split into the two feuds/match-ups. I thought there was an even amount of action between all four contestants and that it was an exceptionally well-worked tag match outside of the framework of native vs. native teams that dominated All Japan from the Choshu invasion onward. Better than any of the Wiliams/Gordy vs. Misawa/Kawada tags from memory and maybe the best native vs. foreigners tag of the 90s.
  5. ohtani's jacket
    #360 It's been many a moon since I last saw this. Great match. One of Kawada's best. The thing I like about it most is that Kawada's not trying to work shoot style. The only weapon he takes into the fight to contend with the newcomer's style is the armbar. Aside from that, he uses a lot of his signature offence even in the submission wrestling. The bout is made by the fact that Kawada has the grittiest style of the big four and is a great seller. I especially liked the way he sold the Albright German he tried to pop up from. More wrestlers should try popping up and collapsing. That's a smart spot. I also liked the headscissors counter he did. It was a great counter but still felt like a pro-wrestler finding their way in the dark against a "shoot guy" unlike the shoot trained counters that the UWF guys would do. At no point did it seem like Kawada was anything more than an All Japan trained pro-wrestler trying to adjust to a guy with an entirely different fighting style, and I thought he did a beautiful job of conveying that.
  6. ohtani's jacket
    #372 I've always liked Misawa & Kawada vs. Jumbo & Taue as a match-up, so I thought I'd treat myself to a rewatch of this. 1991 All Japan was a simpler style of wrestling than the years that followed but Misawa & Co. were younger, and quicker, and more athletic. They weren't as banged up as in the years to come and there was a crispness to their work than you don't find in their later work. The best thing about this match is watching Kawada and Misawa deal with the Jumbo problem. They try their damnedest to knock his block off and for once they actually succeed. The only misstep in this was Misawa's tape falling off. They took forever to tape his shoulder up and it was about as effective as if they'd used the pre-match streamers. This wasn't as deliberately epic as a lot of other All Japan tags but more fun, IMO.
  7. ohtani's jacket
    #357 Another match not watched in donkey's years. This was kind of an experimental MMA style bout. Not the first of its kind in Joshi but definitely the most well known. It reminded me a bit of those Don Nakaya Nielsen fights from the 80s in that it was clearly dated but still retained some of its novelty value. A few things hurt it. Firstly, there were no rope breaks and they were allowed to fight on the outside. Secondly, the submissions were sold like regular Joshi submission holds, which meant that they lay in the holds forever. This was particularly hard to watch having just seen some higher end UWF-i. The stand up fighting was better than the submission wrestling, though they used too many pro-wrestling moves down the stretch. Thankfully, they returned to striking and Hotta's kick at the end was brutal looking. I thought this was watchable but it wasn't something I particularly liked. There's plenty of better hybrid stuff from the 90s in my view.
  8. ohtani's jacket
    #35１ This was another match I was skeptical about. Shoot style tags remind me a lot of doubles in tennis. I love tennis, but I really, if ever, watch doubles. The only time I really watch doubles is if I'm watching tennis live. But this was an excellent match. The reason it was so good was that everyone knew their role. Nelson was clearly better at selling than Lydick, and better at reversals and counters, but Lydick looked more dominant on the mat. And so Lydick looked good working from on top while Nelson did most of the selling. Likewise, Kakihara was the better striker on his team and Sakuraba better at mat work. You didn't see too much stand up work from Sakuraba and not that much ground work from Kakihara. Really disciplined match in that respect. Post match buzz and all, but it's hard to think of a better midcard match that's shown up on the list thus far.
  9. ohtani's jacket
    #367 This wasn't as exciting as the Yamazaki fight, but it was a different sort of match. Here the promising up and comer took on the top dog, who was meant to be his superior in every way both in his striking and groundwork and submissions. The work was pretty at times but laid out in a fairly obvious way. You knew exactly when Tamura would get each of his "hope spots," so to speak. It was effective in terms of where Tamura was at in terms of mounting a challenge against Takada but point blank obvious in terms of its delivery. One thing I'll say for it is that Takada looked better on the mat than usual. Other than that, my main takeaways were that Tamura clearly improved his striking ability as he matured, and for whatever reason bookers and promoters were never afraid to job out poor old Yamazaki.
  10. ohtani's jacket
    #355 The work here wasn't that great but they made up for it with plenty of spite. Anjoh was such a dick in this. He's such a smug little prick. You love him and wanna see someone wipe the shit eating grin off his face all at the same time. Surprisingly, that person you want to see do the grin wiping is none other than Chono. I came out of this wanting to see the Chono/Anjoh singles matches, which is not something I expected going in. So, thumbs up to this.
  11. ohtani's jacket
    #388 I can't say I'm a fan of Psicosis acting like a member of the NWO. That's not the Psicosis I get a kick out of. The action here is pretty good; but it's very much a house show version of the touring Santo show, and a 1997 Tijuana version at that. The stuff you'd expect to look good looked good, but the general tone was toward house show lucha, and I have a hard time seeing how this comes close to the top 10 for an extremely stacked year in lucha.
  12. ohtani's jacket
    #387 This was all right, but I think its rep over the years is largely built on the fact that it was a good match in the WWF at a time when good matches were rare. Being heel vs. heel doesn't really help even if Davey Boy was positioned as the face in Europe and Owen was meant to be working heel. Davey Boy comes across as strangely neutered to me unlike, say, his big win at Wembley in '92. I was a huge Owen mark back in the day and this was the kind of match we wanted to see that proved that Owen could work a **** match, and Davey was a guy who always kind of bordered on being accepted as a good worker, so there was a fair bit of goodwill towards this match, but I think there was a little naivety too in claiming that this was "scientific" or overly "technical". I can only believe that from a WWF fan's perspective and not from anyone who's branched out a bit.
  13. ohtani's jacket
    #386 This was a good match but at the end of the day it's still a Rob Van Dam match. To me that's like saying Rey Mysterious had a good match with the Miz or something.
  14. ohtani's jacket
    #384 When I first saw this listed, I immediately thought: "this can't be that good." But it really is that good. In fact, it's perfectly laid out for what it is and delivers in spades thanks to the synergy between the hometown crowd and the energy of the performers. I honestly thought there wasn't a single thing they should have changed. It was arguably the perfect match involving a non-wrestlerr and coincided with the perfect storm of Flair's return. And as Loss said, the NWO were super professional. Great stuff all round.
  15. ohtani's jacket
    #380 I must be softening in my old age as I thought this was all right. It clearly delivered as a big match spectacle even if the stuff with Thesz was bollocks. It was never going to be a great shoot style match since the extent of Vader's matwork was lying on top of people and Takada's ground game was a weak point of his, but the stand up portions were good and Vader gave Takada a fair old clip. The finish came a bit too soon for my liking as the bout was just warming up, but Takada's corner called it by shouting that Vader was tiring. Weird hearing Vader holler like a stuck pig during the post match ceremonies. Takada laid on the charm on the mic. All in all a decent match with a lot of big moments.
  16. ohtani's jacket
    #383 This was the first match from the list that I thought was just "there." I've never been on the Ogawa bandwagon and I'm not much of an Akiyama fan either, so your mileage will vary, but to me there wasn't anything special about this at all. I get liking the match if you're really into Ogawa, but if you're not then it's a lower tier All Japan match.
  17. ohtani's jacket
    #381 I really liked this. It may have been Kawada beating up a banged up Misawa and the result may have come too late for some folks, but when you hear the Japanese call and the crowd erupt it's pretty special. To me it felt like Misawa's injuries meant they reeled things in and had a really solid minimalist bout. I don't know how I'd feel if I watched it in its linear context, but I watched their 7/93 match a few days ago and then this and I didn't think there was any tremendous drop off.
  18. ohtani's jacket
    #389 This is such a great match. Easily the best match the Blonds had and far better than anything they did with Steamboat and Douglas. Bagwell and Scorpio were such a fun team. I don't know the story behind them being put together, but they totally made it work. I usually dislike time limit draws but this was an example of how they can be done well. There was so much action going on in the last minute or so and and the show went off the air with everyone left buzzing.
  19. ohtani's jacket
    #397 I've read a lot about Tracy Smothers over the years but haven't seen a lot of him. I've enjoyed the stuff that's made Loss' list so far. The brawling here is pretty good and the ladder spots are suitability restrained. There's the old trope of them struggling to climb the ladder and taking baby steps, and the cheque is way too low for men that big to not just reach up and pull it down, but that's ladder matches for you. I didn't like Candido overselling the bump he took on the missed dive. Thought it would have been better, and more dramatic, if he'd sold it like the wipeout that it was. The ladder did its part selling, though. Nice job selling that limb work during the finish, buddy. I'm surprised this got some traction for US MOTY. Seemed to be missing that extra gear. Perhaps it helps to have watched the lead up.
  20. ohtani's jacket
    #398 This was a great match, possibly Tamura's career best to this point. Yamazaki had a few barn burners like this in UWF-i. There's a lot of beautiful counter wrestling in this and very little wasted motion. I recommend watching the English commentary version if you want to pick up on more of the details. I really liked the finish as it played off Tamura's opening gambit and toyed with the question of whether Tamura was arrogant or not. As it turned out, his unbridled joy at pulling off the win melted away his punk kid attitude and showed how badly he wanted to succeed. Quite a moment in the young man's career and a huge step up in his performances from 1990 and 1991. That's one of the fun things about Tamura. You get to watch him evolve from a rookie to one of the best fighters in the world much like watching players develop in real sports. Love Tamura.
  21. ohtani's jacket
    #399 Loss' list has reacquainted me with Marty Jannetty, that's for sure. Maybe I need to re-watch this but I didn't see it as anything more than a decent television match. The forced storyline of the Double Doinks and what Heenan saw was too much of a distraction for me. Heenan has been hilarious in a lot of the matches I've seen lately, but I don't think the McMahon/Savage/Heenan pairing worked and this was close to Bobby's subpar work in WCW. I was surprised to see the commentary praised here, and lit looks like I didn't pay enough attention to the multiple layers. Trivia question: is this the only match on the list where one of the parts is played by two different workers?
  22. ohtani's jacket
    Matty D delivers! It's a match that pretty much has zero chance of being as good as the first since Fuji and Duggan are involved, but Heenan is hilarious on commentary and carries the match with his back and forth barbs with Hillbilly Jim. Shawn plays FIP in this one, but it's nowhere near as meaningful as Jannetty's performance. Still, Heenan's quips keep things interesting.
  23. ohtani's jacket
    #400 This holds up well. As others have mentioned, it's a hybrid style not unlike a sped up version of BattlARTS, but it's still a Joshi match at heart and has the same frenetic pace as your typical women's match. Yoshida is wonderful in this match. The transformation she made in ARSION was remarkable really. Naoki Sano did something similar when he became a shoot style worker but in many ways Yoshida is more spectacular. In the case of BattlARTS, I've often complained that the hybrid style distracted from the shoot style elements but here Yoshida was almost the perfect blend of shoot style, Joshi and lucha and since I like those three styles I thought it was pretty to watch. Akino went all out and left it all out there. She made a couple of mistakes but it was a heck of an effort on her part and a sprint that was no doubt a blur for a young worker like her. I'm glad I didn't sour on this.
  24. ohtani's jacket
    All right, here we go... June Byers vs. Penny Banner was slightly better stuff from Byers, but it was just highlights so who really knows. Lindy Lawrence vs. Lynn O'Connor was another solid performance from Lawrence. The match wasn't as good as the bout against LaMonte but the focus was on wrestling and not hair pulling, fortunately. The commentator drove me nuts, though. I think he broke some kind of record for how many times you can refer to a wrestler by their full name. And when he wasn't mentioning them by name he was using their nicknames, "Gorgeous" Lindy Lawrence and the "Battling Ballerina" Lynn O'Connor. The full monty was using both and boy did he go for the full monty a lot. Ilio DiPaolo vs. Sato Keomuka was another gimmick match for DiPaolo. This time a Judo Jacket match. Eh. Right after that was Ed "Strangler" Lewis vs. Dick Shikat from 1932. Shikat looks very much like a German wrestler and works like one too. You can see a lot of Horst Hoffman in him, or a lot of Shikat in Hoffman. This was the first time for me to see Lewis wrestle, so I don't have much to go on, but aside from a powerful looking headlock and a sharp side headlock takedown he didn't really show me much. Admittedly, it was only the highlights of an hour plus match (the commentator actually referred to "high spots" at one point), but Shikat appeared the more talented of the two. Good match but not as good as the Londos/Nagurski fight. The clips of Ramona Isabella & Ethel Johnson vs Babs Wingo & Marva Scott were interesting as they were a troupe of Black female wrestlers who toured around the country wrestling each other. I also saw a clip of an old women's match between Olga Baranoff and Hanka Kavetzka but that was very much your cliched slapping and hair pulling. Clips of Abe Coleman vs. Lou Plummer, Jim Londos vs. Ray Steele and Man Mountain Dean vs. Howard Cantonwine all look good, especially the first two match-ups. Man Mountain Dean is the undiscovered fatboy worker of the 30s. Next, I watched some old damaged film of the 1920 Earl Caddock vs. Joe Stecher fight. I believe this match marks the end of the catch-as-catch-can era of professional wrestling and that there has been much debate over the years as to whether it was a work or shoot. I'm not smart enough or well-read enough to enter that debate, but work or shoot it reminded me of shoot style, which should come as no surprise given that catch was one of the foundations of the UWF style. Much of the fight (at least what is shown in the film) is Stecher going for his body scissors hold and Caddock fighting his way out of it and Caddock trying to pin Stecher's shoulders to the mat. In newsreel form it's intriguing but I can't imagine what two hours of it was like. Finally, we have the complete opposite -- The Beast vs. Argentina Rocca. Well, you might think it's the complete opposite but my God does Johnny Powers go to great lengths on commentary to put this over a legitimate sporting contest even when the Beast is doing comedy spots. The Beast has to be on the short list for hairiest men in (wrestling) history. I'm not a fan of Rocca but the Beast has a knack of making mediocre stars tolerable and there's a novelty to his bouts that hasn't worn off yet. Go the Beast.
  25. ohtani's jacket
    Made it through the second 50. A lot of handheld matches this time round. Here are the matches I enjoyed most: 450. Genichiro Tenryu vs Great Muta (WAR 10/11/96) 447. Ric Flair, Arn Anderson & Sting vs Great Muta, Buzz Sawyer & Dragon Master (WCW Power Hour 01/26/90) 446. Randy Savage vs Genichiro Tenryu (WWF/AJPW Summit 04/13/90) 430. Manami Toyota vs Toshiyo Yamada (AJW Grand Prix 06/21/92) 426. Volk Han vs Dick Vrij (RINGS 08/21/92) 413. The Rockers vs Powers of Pain (WWF MSG Network 01/15/90)
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