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ohtani's jacket

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  1. ohtani's jacket
    Mile Zrno vs Franz Schumann (Berlin 1998) This was a seriously great wrestling match. I had no idea there was still European wrestling this good in 1998. Zrno looked out of this world here and I've seen Schumann have a wrestling match quite like this. Unfortunately, the match was heavily clipped. Every time they did a cool spot there would be a slow-mo closeup of it that served as a jump cut. The edit still retained the shape of the bout but it was largely a series of highlights. But what highlights and what wrestling. To be honest, this is the last place I would have gone looking for a good Zrno match if I'd been skimming through match lists, so here's proof once more than you can teach an old dog new tricks over, and over, again.
  2. ohtani's jacket
    Ilio DiPaolo vs. "Big" Bill Miller was a really good heavyweight match. They pretty much did everything you'd want from two big men. A little bit of technical wrestling, a bit of strength stuff, some roughhousing, you name it. A really good match. Chief Don Eagle vs. Walter Palmer surprised me. I'd only seen Don Eagle against Gorgeous George and that clearly wasn't an indicator of his in-ring ability. He had a slightly idiosyncratic grappling style but I love little quirks like that. Palmer I had seen against Thesz and was stoked to see him again. A fine wrestler indeed. This was another quality match w/ Don Eagle really catching my eye. Next up was Jim Londos vs. Bronko Nagurski. This is a really famous match that most people would have at least heard of. It's a match I've known about since I first discovered people talking about wrestling on the internet but it's taken me this long to watch it. That's not a bad thing as I'm sure that I appreciate it more now than I ever would have in the past. Anyway, it's truly sublime. From the opening moments where they'd fighting to get into a referee's hold up until the decisive moments, it's an epic wrestling match. They just keep fighting and fighting and wrestling each other. There was a thread about the perfect wrestling style elsewhere and for me this may be it. Following up that is hard to do but Doc and Mike Gallagher vs. Dick Beyer and Bobby Brown is a fun match. The Gallagher brothers are your typical goon squad types but clever with it, and it's always fun to see Dick Beyer flying about pre-mask. It's not a match where you get to see him wrestle much but he had his babyface act down pat. Last up was Donn Lewin vs. Leo Garibaldi from the Los Angeles territory. This was a complete surprise. I knew that Garibaldi was good but this was a phenomenal bout. Lewin was a New York boy that they'd brought in for television and they gave him a two fall showcase against one of their local stars, Garibaldi. Super competitive, fast paced wrestling match with exciting holds and nonstop action. When you consider the premise of the New York boy being brought in to showcase some new, out of state talent, it was sensational. This was just the bee's knees. A top 10 contender from the 50s stuff I've watched. So there you go, five great matches in a row. This channel is on a roll.
  3. ohtani's jacket
    Loss' #448. This was the first Jeff Jarrett USWA match I could find so it was impossible for me to consider it generic. I thought the action between Jarrett and Pritchard was strong and Jarrett looked like a much better worker than later on in his career, but the stuff with Dundee and Tojo on the outside was weak and Embry coming out at the end wasn't really vintage either. I appreciated getting a look at Jarrett, though.
  4. ohtani's jacket
    Loss' #447 is a super heated six-man tag. Fantastic TV main event. Great finish, too. Perfect lead in to the clash. Agree that Flair vs. Sawyer would have been amazing.
  5. ohtani's jacket
    Loss' #450 was roughly a million times better than I thought it would be. I don't think they could have worked the match any better than they did. One of the best violent hardcore brawls I've seen.
  6. ohtani's jacket
    Well, I made it through the first 50 matches of Loss' list. Some of the stuff is available and there were a few things I didn't feel like revisiting, but it's a really eclectic and interesting list. These were the matches I liked the best: 496. Super Vader & John Tenta vs Gary Albright & Kazuo Yamazaki (UWFI Kings Road 10/08/94) 488. PG-13 vs Tracy Smothers & Jesse James Armstrong (USWA TV 02/17/96) 477. The Scorpion vs Cutie Suzuki (JWP 08/30/91) 483. Randy Savage vs Shawn Michaels (WWF Munich, Germany 04/14/92) 458. Eddy Guerrero vs Chris Jericho (WCW Fall Brawl 09/14/97)
  7. ohtani's jacket
    Loss' #464. This was one of my favourites back in the day and it still holds up. I love how minimalist it is. It's very much like a "small film" in terms of its narrative struck, but like the best small films it packs a powerful emotional punch in terms of Ohtani's endearing and over the top reactions to the nearfalls down the stretch. There are some imperfections for sure just like they are when you revisit films or records you liked in the past, but these two had great chemistry and I'm still a big fan of this pairing.
  8. ohtani's jacket
    The April 19th match from Sheffield, England is also a really good match. Savage doesn't sell the knee, but it's a Savage babyface match so you know he sells the crap out of everything anyway. The match is a bit more back and forth in terms of which wrestler is in control and Elizabeth gets involved at both the beginning and the end. Michaels does one absolutely amazing reversal and is just as solid as the Munich bout. Sherri tries to attack Savage with her boots afterwards but clobbers Michaels instead and Savage knocks both their noggins together before posing with Elizabeth. Crowd pleasing stuff made all the more enjoyable by having Gorilla and Bobby on commentary. Bobby slagging off Elizabeth and lusting after Sherri is classic Brain shtick and he gets in another dozen zingers like claiming he taught Michaels the reversal in the hall that morning.
  9. ohtani's jacket
    Loss' #451 is a slow burner. Hashimoto is a vicious bastard in this and Yamazaki does an excellent job of selling his ribs. The parts with Hirata and Iizuka are a bit boring but the match is really about the ferocity of Hashimoto's attacks and the pain that Yamazaki is in. A perennial underdog (some might say under achiever), Yamazaki gets a rare moment in the sun and Hashimoto's disbelief is palpable. Not a match that ever really touched greatness, IMO, but I can see folks feeling differently if they've seen the build up and are invested in the narrative.
  10. ohtani's jacket
    #452. I've never liked the Blonds and I don't remember any of their matches against Steamboat and Douglas being classics. A revisit of this hasn't changed my opinion. This is exactly what you expect it to be. Nothing more and nothing less. The trouble is that when you start out with middling expectations the end result turns out being pretty average. Austin was so awkward at this point. I actually thought he looked better working against Douglas than he did Steamboat. And as far as I'm concerned, this whole Blonds run was a massive step down from every single thing that Pillman did in 1992. Probably my biggest problem with the entire thing was that Steamboat/Douglas vs. Pillman\Windham had been perfect. Austin just downgraded things. The best part of the match was the post match where he Blonds acted like proper heels. The rest was pretty standard.
  11. ohtani's jacket
    #456. I've never been a Fantastics fan and I don't even really like Kikuchi that much. The guy I like the most in this is Joe Malenko and he was the one that was featured the least. Waay too much going on in this even for a sprint. I realise it was clipped, but I couldn't figure out where the hook was. Maybe I was supposed to care about Kikuchi, but unfortunately I don't. Even if I were a Fantastics fan, I'm not sure I'd really care about what they were doing in Japan based on this. Obviously, they were under time constraints but transplanted Southern tag would have been a lot stronger, IMO, than Japanese spotfest.
  12. ohtani's jacket
    Loss' #457. Man, I love Hashimoto's theme music, and his ring entrance was so fucking great. Hashimoto vs. Anjoh is a match-up I could watch all day long. Normally, I'd hate this shoot style vs. pro-style stuff, but I've never really considered Anjoh a great shoot stylist. To me, he's always been a pro-wrestler doing a shooter gimmick, and I mean that in all sincerity as I really do like Anjoh. Hashimoto vs. Takayama was another great looking match-up. Hell, Hashimoto vs. anyone seems like a great looking match up circa 1996. The match itself was really only half-decent. It was comparable to some of those WAR vs. New Japan tags but Hirata didn't have much on a guy like Hara. But it was prime Hashimoto, so I ate it up all the same.
  13. ohtani's jacket
    #458 -- History has not been kind to this match. I guess in '97 people expected more spectacular high spots from a cruiser weight bout, but this really was an excellent bout with great psychology and tremendous wrestling from both men. By far and away one of the best Jericho bouts I've seen, and the only time I ever like Chris Jericho is begrudgingly. Even Heenan and Schiavone seemed to forget about the NWO for five minutes and got drawn into this one. This is the kind of match I would have bypassed before this list thinking it was like other disappointing PPV matches like that Eddie vs. Malenko match from Starrcade, but this is super underrated. Worth a revisit if you haven't, people.
  14. ohtani's jacket
    #461 -- My takeaway from this is that there was a kernel of a really great Valentine vs. Garvin NWA bout in this amid all the goofy WWF bullshit and that kernel was stiff enough and hard-hitting enough to counter the missteps down the stretch like the repeated pin attempts or the face Garvin made. Most of all I love how this feud made the Hammer relevant again albeit for a short time. Valentine dropped the elbow on that phasing down. I wanna watch the rest of the matches in their series now.
  15. ohtani's jacket
    #466. The Bodies were good in this and everything, but I really don't need to see Lance Storm wrestle. This wouldn't have been all that memorable without Jericho's blade job. Ross was in his element here with the bah gawds coming thick and fast. It ended up being quite the spectacle, and the Bodies did an awesome job of working over Jericho's head injury. The finish was shoddy, though I did like Cornette kicking the bottom rope and hobbling about on his foot. Match gets points for being memorable.
  16. ohtani's jacket
    #467. Rapid fire spotfest that wasn't really for me. I prefer the earlier MPro stuff with a cast of characters I could get into.
  17. ohtani's jacket
    #468 I'm not a huge fan of Eddie from this era, but he was starting to show the type of poise and in-ring character that would go on to make him, in my view, one of the great performers of the modern era. This match was technically good as both men had superb execution, but I'm not sure that the whole "Mexican born" guy chasing his American dream story really meshed with what looked like more of a holdover from Los Gringos Locos. That may have just been Joey Styles' shitty commentary, or maybe it was because Eddie tried to work heel, was cheered by the crowd for his moves and then earned that now cliched "respect" from his opponent. I didn't see much cockiness or arrogance from Scorpio either. What I saw was what you get in most Scorpio bouts and that's a ton of bomb throwing. The latter half of the match really had too much bomb throwing to be honest. I also thought Scorpio lifted Eddie's shoulder after the two count but then I couldn't really understand what the ref was gesturing and Scorpio's reaction was one of disbelief not cockiness. Anyway, if there was that thread of a story there it wasn't set up or paid off in a satisfying way. The nice execution made for a good match, though.
  18. ohtani's jacket
    I'm gonna try to be positive about Loss' #469. Firstly, it appealed to that most Japanese of sensibilities of a fighter showing fighting spirit in a loss. Second, the flurry Tamura has where it seems like the impossible might happen is a really cool moment in the bout. Thirdly, these are the type of Vader bouts I liked in Germany. What irked me most, though, wasn't that this wasn't shoot style. I can live with it being a crazy spectacle. What bugged me was the finish. Couldn't Vader have learnt a shoot style hold instead of throwing out pro-style moves? If they didn't want Vader to TKO Tamura with strikes, I would have liked to have seen Vader grab an armbar or something unorthodox from the big man, But that's just me.
  19. ohtani's jacket
    I could only find a JIP version of Loss' #473 but loved it. There was nothing really special about what Flair or Morton were doing but the crowd were super hot and both guy's characters were so clearly defined that you just enjoyed the fact it was Flair vs. Morton in front of a hot crowd. I swear until my dying day that as soon as Flair cut his hair it was over. It's like Samson and Delilah.
  20. ohtani's jacket
    Loss' #474. This started off well and Bourne looked like an absolute beast, but Kerry sucked too much for me to rate this too highly. Those discus punches were abysmal. I've always loathed matches that go backstage. I can barely tolerate matches that go around the arena. I'm kind of surprised by how many people thought it was cool that they half-arsed it on a pickup truck in the middle of a thunderstorm. The real fight here seemed to die out once they left the ring.
  21. ohtani's jacket
    I hadn't seen Loss' #477 in years so decided to give it a whirl. Great little match. It's Joshi so some of the transitions aren't the greatest but the battle from the mat to the high impact moves is as dogged and hard fought as any match in the 500-451 to date. Cutie was always a fierce competitor and she showed that in spades here, and the Scorpion was a talented "mystery girl" in the same vein that the Tarantula had been in the 80s. Stylistically, this reminded me of what Chigusa, Asuka and Omori were trying to do on the back of the UWF boom in the mid-to-late 80s. They really mixed up shoot style and Joshi puroresu well and had a committed, hard fought bout.
  22. ohtani's jacket
    Loss' #488 was a great piece of TV. Solid promo from Baxter to start with, really good studio bout, and a well executed angle to finish with. Felt like classic Memphis TV. Entertaining from wire to wire.
  23. ohtani's jacket
    I could only see the clipped version of #484 w/ Zbyszko on commentary, but you take what you can get. The focus of the clipped version is Larry Z's commentary. Larry was a great talker and it was easy to get suckered into his outrageous take on the match. Some offensive comments, but hey, Zbyszko made a living out of being obnoxious. Would have to see the complete version to actually concentrate on the bout.
  24. ohtani's jacket
    Loss' #480 was a well worked house show bout. I've enjoyed what little PG-13 I've seen in the past and this was another solid performance from them. It had all the ingredients of an enjoyable house show bout and just enough action to avoid being a match that was all about heat. I liked Dudley in this match too. His stuff on offense looked good and his bumping and selling helped carry the action. The hot tag wasn't that great and neither was the finish but Pete mentioned something about Whipwreck had a knee injury and he did look fairly immobile at times. Were PG-13 the best tag team in wrestling at this point?
  25. ohtani's jacket
    Loss' #478 was better than I thought it would be. Hansen vs. Terry was still pretty fun in 1990, but I actually think I liked Dory taking the fight to Stan even more. The Funks were relics of a bygone age at this point but I guess there's nothing All Japan crowds like more than the Funks having one more last hurrah.
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