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ohtani's jacket

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Everything posted by ohtani's jacket

  1. ohtani's jacket
    #413 Miracle match that's still fresh a second or third time round. Jannetty is phenomenal in this. Not only because of those high elevation bumps but for his selling throughout. He was just brilliant. Both teams looked good here. The Powers of Pain for their power wrestling and the Rockers for their teamwork. The match didn't overstay it's welcome but at the same time left you wanting more. Too bad there wasn't a rematch.
  2. ohtani's jacket
    #404 If nothing else, this is a match which holds your attention. Scotty Steiner was pumped up to begin with. If there's one thing I like about pre-Big Poppa Pump Scott Steiner it's his matwork. He just cannibalises guys on the mat. In fact, he may be one of my favourite mat guys of all time simply from an aesthetic point of view. He wouldn't budge an inch when it came to giving up position, but man did he look good. He was so fired up that it wouldn't surprise me if his brain thought he was in some legit competition. All of the Steiners' shit looked good in this match. Yeah, structure, and selling, and pacing are important, but I've got nothing against a spotfest when an amateur wrestling spotfest. I guess Kurt Angle really was the third Steiner brother after all. Iizuka took a licking, that's for sure. He would have been pretty sore in the morning. I thought they let up on him a bit after his injury and started pounding on him again when they wanted their shit to look good. Fujinami vs. each brother was the most fascinating wrinkle for me. I thought Fujinami looked pretty good in this. As good as you can look in a match where your opponents aren't being entirely cooperative. The Steiners did sell a bit for the Japanese and there was a brief Scotty in Peril segment, so it wasn't entirely uncooperative. Throughout the course of the bout I kept thinking would the stiffness have been so much of a factor in Japan or did it just stand out because it was so stiff for a WCW match (ala Regal vs. Finlay). I'm still not really sure. I'm not even sure if the Steiners would've taken liberties with Iizuka in Japan. Really interesting match.
  3. ohtani's jacket
    #401 Solid match; more notable for being better than their Clash match than anything else. Personally, I prefer Flair as a heel. There were small details to his babyface work that didn't wash with me like his comeback at the end which blew off the figure four headlock segment. Props to Eaton for taking those bumps on the floor, but Flair caught a second wind from nowhere.
  4. ohtani's jacket
    #415 I've never been a fan of any of the Bret/Yokozuna matches and this was no exception. It's not really the workers' fault. This was worked pretty much how you'd expect it to be, but it was still slow, plodding and dull. Bret vs. a big man is a match-up that doesn't really interest me as Bret has neither the offense nor the theatrical selling ability to make it interesting.
  5. ohtani's jacket
    #423 "Underwhelming" is probably the best description for this match, but it's pretty clear from watching it that they didn't set out to reinvent the wheel. It's very much a house show title match, and I'm pretty convinced these days that a lot of the great looking lucha from title records and lucha mags was house show quality.
  6. ohtani's jacket
    #411 This was okay. I expected a bit more action and a bit more wrestling. Instead, it was like a beat down from one of the six-mans.
  7. ohtani's jacket
    #412 Wild Street Fight but as with most Onita fights I'd rather be watching a Hong Kong action flick.
  8. ohtani's jacket
    #418 This wasn't my cup of tea (obviously), but I did think that Terry Funk did as good a job as anyone outside of Black Terry at working the brawling around the arena style. They didn't really go for the kill, though, so in the end it was only mildly entertaining.
  9. ohtani's jacket
    #414 I liked what I could see of this, which wasn't much. It's a shame that there wasn't anyone filming this at ringside but I guess being three or four rows back made this an authentic handheld .I liked how the pink and red hues gave this a real red light feel. When I first got the internet, and file sharing meant downloading postage stamped files on a modem all night long, this match took on something of a legendary standing thanks to rspw award archives and the like. It's not a bad series of matches, but I'm not sure it deserves its legendary status anymore especially with the crap finish. Still, I finally got to see this and I guess that means I've knocked if off old-school modem list.
  10. ohtani's jacket
    #424 I thought this was a good match. It was a bit slow and methodical at times, and the build didn't quite match the finish despite Misawa continuing to sell the elbow after the bout, but I liked that Kawada had a game plan. He's pretty clearly the best mat worker in All Japan. The work itself is pretty basic but his holds look nasty and he looks nasty doing them. Ultimately, he didn't have enough in his arsenal to best Misawa. Misawa was a bit like Michael Jordan here, or maybe a Pete Sampras or Michael Shumacher, to run with some 90s examples of champions who always had that little bit extra up their sleeve, or in reserve, no matter how hard their opponents tried or how stiff their challenge was. Misawa was probably a bit too dominant given how many times he suplexed Kawada at the end, but this was his absolute physical prime and I guess he deserved to show off his class a bit.
  11. ohtani's jacket
    #425 I liked this just fine. In general, I think the six man tags and tag matches are better than the singles matches from this era, but I tried to take this on its merits instead of expecting it to be the next level up in the Jumbo/Misawa feud. I will say that I think All Japan matches are a lot better when they're striking each other as opposed to working submissions, but if there's one thing that All Japan did better than anyone else it was their finishing stretches. Jumbo was fired up stretch (and afterward in the locker room too) and really drove home his size and strength advantage to brutal effect. I'll leave it to others to worry if Misawa made any inroads toward beating Jumbo again. I liked this as a stand alone bout.
  12. ohtani's jacket
    #430 Another match I hadn't seen in donkey's years. The last match If theirs I watched was their bout from '89 which I really liked, and I thought this was excellent as well. Sure, there were flaws, and they could have sold more, but the action never let up and I loved the contrast in styles and the dynamic it created. This is by far my favorite era of Manami Toyota because it feels like she's working 50/50 with her opponent instead of being the one calling the match and forcing opponents to wrestle her match. I really liked how she needed to pull out submission counters to fend off Yamada's kicks, and for a wrestler not renowned for her selling I thought she did s great job of selling that splash onto Yamada's knees. There was a slight lull in the third quarter of the match, but they picked things up for the stretch run and I thought it was a tremendous run home. I was actually kind of thrilled for Yamada, who've I never fully liked, but who was really likable here, as I think Fumi Saito pointed out, though not for the reason he mentioned which was her outfit. Yamada seemed the stronger of the two down the stretch and felt like the one with more in reserve. Deserved winner of an excellent contest.
  13. ohtani's jacket
    #426. This was blissfully short compared to the Misawa/Kobashi match I watched. Volk is such a beautiful wrestler to watch. Every motion he makes in this match is beautiful whether it's on offense or defense. It doesn't matter how good Vrij is, Volk is mesmerizing. I'm struggling to think of how many wrestlers I thought were on another stratosphere as though they were walking on clouds, but Volk is one of them. There are a lot of comments here suggesting Volk "pulled out the win." To me, he manipulated the situation from the get-go and the result was never in doubt.
  14. ohtani's jacket
    #437. These two had a run of matches from '96 through to '97 that I really liked. This felt like a test drive for those bouts. They were obviously trying hard, but when a match like this doesn't click for you it's like watching two wrestlers go through the motions of an epic match. I liked the final few minutes but I could have done without going through 30 minutes to get to them.
  15. ohtani's jacket
    #441. I enjoyed this quite a bit. It followed a simple tag strategy of separating the partners from one another and working over the injured man, which is classic tag structure and classic All Japan structure. I thought Taue, in particular, did an excellent job of working this narrative and was the driving force behind laying it down. I can see how it must've been seen as a step down from the more grandiose tags of previous years, and to be fair the end result doesn't feel like a particularly big or important moment, but the work felt fresh at least for someone like me who doesn't watch a lot of All Japan.
  16. ohtani's jacket
    Mile Zrno vs. Steve Wright (Berlin 1/31/98) Great match! If there was a better wrestling match in 1998 it only took place in BattlARTS or RINGS. I've often heard that Wright would guzzle an opponent and wouldn't give him anything unless he was able to literally pry it from him. He controlled this bout from start to finish but he let Zrno shine so he must have had a positive opinion of our fearless hero. Zrno, for his part, looked great. If this is tail end Zrno then few wrestlers have had a better finishing run to their career. Great stuff. Great upload.
  17. ohtani's jacket
    I think that's fair. I think people are also working backwards a lot of the time. I mean nobody called the All Japan style "King's Road" or referred to Kawada, Misawa, Kobashi and Taue as the "four pillars" when I first heard of All Japan Pro-Wrestling.
  18. ohtani's jacket
    The chop exchanges really began with Hashimoto vs. Tenryu in 1998. I can't think of any instances of it before then. It was taken to the next level in the 00s by workers like Kobashi and Sasaki, but I don't think you can call that Strong Style. Modern NJPW (with the forearm exchanges in every bout) have explicitly said they don't adhere to Strong Style.
  19. ohtani's jacket
    Loss #443. Man, I was such a Hart Foundation mark back in the day and their entrance is still cool. I love Bret's swagger when he enters the ring. This was a pretty good match. A lot of the time, people look at teams like these and expect the WWF equivalent of The Rock 'n' Roll Express vs. The Midnight Express; something which was never going to happen but disappoints folks all the same. Taken on its own terms, this is a good bout. A touch too long maybe, and a little disjointed, but there was plenty to like. I especially liked the early work between Jannetty and Bret. That would have been an interesting singles match now that I think about it. Bret definitely seemed in a shitty mood in the third fall. Even though they'd fixed the rope, his timing was way off on the ropes. The spluttering end to the bout does deflate things a bit. The Rockers' win doesn't really feel like a big moment while Bret pulling an Isiah Thomas and not wanting to shake the Rockers' hands feels 3/4 legit given how grumpy he seems. But the first two falls pull the third fall up by its shoe laces and the end result is a good match.
  20. ohtani's jacket
    Next up was Ilio DiPaolo brawling with The Masked Marvel in quite a gimmicky sort of bout. The Marvel was unmasked at the end and the commentator rather sheepishly recognised him as "Bull Wright," a journeyman type the crowd didn't seem to remember or care about much. Following that was an old silent film from the mid-30s with "Mexican Champion" Vincent Lopez taking on Man Mountain Dean in a classic big man vs. wrestler bout. They duked it out in entertaining fashion. This match was also historically important as Lopez won Lou Daro's Los Angeles version of the World Heavyweight Championship amid some pretty intense politics -- http://www.wrestling-titles.com/personalities/lewis_ed/bio/lewisbio25.html Doc and Mike Gallagher vs. Johnny Barend and Billy Red Lyons was another look at the Gallagher stooges. Doc Gallagher's head was completely shaved here. He looked like he'd been in a hair match somewhere south of the border but the commentator said it was because he delights in going into steam rooms in the various athletic clubs around the country, and when the fellas all look at his fine physique he says "I'm 67," which the old boys get a kick out of. Alrighty then. I was interested in getting a look at Billy Red Lyons here as his friend the Destroyer likes to put him over in shoot interviews, but this isn't the type of bout where you can get a good look at the babyfaces as they're really just foils for the bigger name heels. The match was decent without anything really spectacular happening. Lindy Lawrence vs. Jacque LaMonte was the first ladies match I've seen from the 50s. Now I'm not going to lie, I thought it would be a bunch of hair pulling and cat fighting. That was just the stereotype I had in my head. Instead, it was a serious wrestling match with real holds and tremendous intensity. They did end up pulling the hair, but they did it while fighting for holds and that made it seem like the match was on a knife edge. Like Lewin vs. Garibaldi, this would make my personal list of the best matches from the 50s. June Byers vs. Cara Combs was closer to my stereotypical idea of 1950s female wrestling. It was actually a bit of a disappointment considering these two are far bigger names than Lawrence and LaMonte. This was Moolah level stuff for the most part, but the jury's still out and I'll try to keep an open mind about upcoming ladies stuff.
  21. ohtani's jacket
    Strong style is the fighting style that Inoki adopted when he established New Japan. It was directly influenced by Karl Gotch's European catch-as-can style but also had a certain number of martial arts influences as well. It's best demonstrated by the Inoki vs. Gotch fight from the inaugural New Japan show. The idea was to present wrestling as a combat sport. New Japan wrestlers wore nothing but black trunks and black shoes, and elbow and knee protectors, and concentrated primiarily on strength conditioning and offensive and defensive wrestling techniques. Inoki liked to claim that pro-wrestling had the strongest fighting spirit and that New Japan was the King of Sports and to back that up he had worked MMA fights with Willem Ruska, Mohammad Ali and Willie Williams that furthered the "legend" of New Japan pro-wrestling being the strongest fighting style in the world. Later, the house style shifted more toward Riki Choshu's style of wrestling and that house style became, IMO, what most fans associate strong style with -- long periods of mat work, a key focus on the lariat as a signature New Japan move, pretty much every wrestler utilizing submission finishers like the crucifix armbar (regardless of how much of a "technical" wrestler they are), the same generic Strong Style look (plain trucks and boots) and the added touch of workers having destructive moves like the brain buster in their repertoire. The best example of this version of Strong Style is probably the Choshu vs. Fujinami series. Personally, I think it as both a wrestling style and a marketing tool. But when other promotions adopt the Strong Style label they're really referring to the Choshu version. I don't think there are too many indie promotions around aping Inoki's philosophies. If there are, it's probably more of an influence from the so-called "Inokism" period of the late 90s-early 00s where he tried to reinstall the MMA element that had made him a star. I also think Strong Style is a classic case of Japanese English. This is just my assumption but I think it really refers to New Japan pro-wrestling being the "strongest style" rather than a certain style that is "strong" (i.e. hard-hitting, etc.)
  22. ohtani's jacket
    I couldn't recall #444 standing out to me when I went through all of the WCW for the Smarkschoice poll and sure enough this was a little on the slow side. The commentators mentioning the animosity between the two and all we saw from Windham were subtle little heel tricks. Then there was a minor escalation and a pier six brawl broke out. Not only that but the wrong guy won. Perhaps they were saving Windham vs. Rhodes for down the road, but we never got to see that feud handled the way it should have been. I also think there's a noticeable drop off in Steamboat's work from 1992 to 1993 and 1994. It's not like he's bad or anything; he's simply "good" whereas in 1992 he was amazing.
  23. ohtani's jacket
    Loss #445. Hadn't seen this in donkey's years. Hate to be a killjoy since the crowd were so into Inoki but I've seen plenty of better Inoki fights and plenty of better Vader matches. Inoki sold pretty well, and afterward he claimed he couldn't remember a thing about the fight, but I don't think Vader was at his menacing best here. In fact, I think he was pretty clearly past his prime and well into his physical decline. Didn't really think this was any better than Flair/Vader, to be honest with you. EDIT: I forgot to mention that the commentators compared the fight to Inoki's matches with Andre, which I thought was a fairly apt comparison. And I didn't really love those matches, either.
  24. ohtani's jacket
    I just love the fact that Loss' #466 actually happened. Tenryu is the one Japanese guy who can lay claim to the fact that he wrestled everybody. Match was good and Sherri was working overtime on the outside.
  25. ohtani's jacket
    I went back and watched as much of this feud as I could find. The TV angle with the retirement match, the referee gig and the reinstatement brought back a lot of childhood memories. I was super into the WWF in 1989 and it's interesting that when you're a kid you're into all the angles and everything that's going on in the promotion (at least I was), especially when you're living all the way over on the other side of the world and following wrestling through Superstars, the TV Guide, the WWF magazine, PPVs that were months behind, and your local tabloid newspaper. I adsorbed it all like a sponge back then. Even watching Valentine and the Colonel Jimmy Hart appear on the Brother Love show brought back fond memories of how excited I would be to see any sort of confrontation on the Brother Love show and how long you'd have to wait at times for the wrestler to come out. Some of those segments seemed to drag on forever. Anyway, I watched quite a few of the Valentine/Garvin house show bouts: MSG 12/30/88 Boston Garden 1/13/89 Philadelphia Spectrum 1/14/89 MSG 9/30/89 Maple Leaf Gardens 10/18/89 They're all good matches but the one to watch, and I believe it made the old DVDVR WWF set, is the September '89 Madison Square Garden bout. That's an incredible fight with some of the stiffest work ever seen in a WWF ring. Structurally, it's similar to a Flair vs. Garvin house show bout and what makes it stand out from the others is that not only is it more brutal but just when you think it's over it goes on for another beat and there's even more stiff action to enjoy. Really great bout. Check it out if you enjoyed the submission match.
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