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ohtani's jacket

DVDVR 80s Project
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Everything posted by ohtani's jacket

  1. ohtani's jacket
    Ultraman, Stuka & Kung Fu vs. Herodes, Masakre & El Satanico, Arena Coliseo 80s This seemed like an exciting match on paper, but it was very much a houseshow match. That wasn't so bad, however, as there were a couple of good laughs. The first half of the match featured a bunch of physical comedy designed to make the rudos look foolish while the second half was a beatdown where the technicos paid for their cheekiness. I love how rudos from this generation could switch from comedy to asskickery without missing a beat, and of course they were led by Satanico, one of the all-time great workers at leading an ass kicking. Satanico's range never ceases to amaze me. He had a comical exchange with Kung Fu that was Shaw Brothers in its choreography then during the beatdown he paraded around like the joke was on the technicos only to lay in the type of shots that showed how pissed he was at being humiliated. I also dug watching Herodes in this match. He's a guy who there's not a lot of footage of but who deserves his rep. Some funky stuff as a base for Stuka, great barrel roll bumps to the outside and cool immovable object spots. Masakre was better later on with the Infernales and Ultraman and Kung Fu weren't at their best here, but for a regular night out at Coliseo it was a nice little slice of 80s lucha.
  2. ohtani's jacket
    It sounds like you went back and forth between early RINGS and the later more Pancrase influenced stuff.
  3. ohtani's jacket
    Don't quite see the correlation when MMA is pretty much dead in Japan well.
  4. ohtani's jacket
    La Fiera vs. Babe Face, hair vs. hair, 8/15/86 This was a good match. It didn't really deliver like a great hair match does, but still worth a look. The first time I watched it I thought the first two falls were a bit innocuous looking. I always get defensive when people say the first two falls in lucha are nothing falls as most of the time I think they work within the rhythm of a lucha libre match, but with these 80s matches the crowds are so poorly mic'ed that it's difficult to get a feel for the rhythm at times. Watching it again, Fiera gave a slightly more nuanced performance in the opening falls than I realised but there were still a few things I had a problem with. One of those problems was Fiera's offense: I'm not a big fan of Fiera's high kick offense to begin with, but I thought it looked particularly strange with the size difference between the workers and Babe Face not being a big bumper. I also thought he used too much high end offense for the first fall of a hair match. I prefer hair matches to be straight out brawling; if they use big moves to try to win the match in the final caida then that's understandable, but I think the matches should start with some haymakers. These guys had some pretty good trash talking/finger pointing going on before the bell, and this was the 80s where a worker would show up for a hair match in some kind of awesome jacket and cut a promo at ringside directed at his opponent; but they went with a slow burning, smouldering start to this match and although there was blood I thought Babe Face's transition back onto offense and his winning submission was weak by hair match standards. Where this match got good was in the third caida. There wasn't any major catalyst for the improvement in the match; they just started brawling in earnest. Fiera's selling was top notch. I loved the slight delay on his flailing bump anytime Babe Face delivered a headbutt or knockdown punch. He was also excellent at pacing his way through the opening section of the fall. He had his back to the canvas a lot and was in danger of succumbing to a second straight submission, and his first comeback attempt was for naught as his arm was too weakened to punch properly. The rest of the match was filled with lots of great little details as that big Fiera offense I mentioned left him increasingly groggy every time he tried to land a knockout blow. The highlight of the match was a face plant he took off a missed plancha from the apron. True dedication to his art. I was just getting into this match and there had just been a moment of typically great controversy in a match like this when all of a sudden it ended. That was a real buzz killer. I thought they could have gone a few minutes longer, though it was pretty obvious that it was Fiera doing all the work. I'm not sure that Babe Face had much chops, at least at this point in his career. Still for what this was I enjoyed it and it was good to see some prime Fiera.
  5. ohtani's jacket
    The Japanese wikipedia doesn't really say that people missing their trains was a reason for the boom ending. Under the company timeline entry for Big Egg it mentions that the crowd number was disappointing, the show ran long and caused people to miss their trains and that the show as a whole marked the end of the boom period. Since the show was announced so far ahead of time, they had the opportunity to run any number of fresh interpromotional match-ups or book a main or semi-final far more memorable than the V*TOP tournament. What was the point of the V*TOP tournament, to give Hokuto a token win on the way out? If Toyota and Kong hadn't produced such a memorable first round match it would've been a total waste of time. Don't know why they wasted the Kong/Kansai match-up on a meaningless semi-final and all things considered they would have been better off giving Hokuto one last WWWA title shot out of respect instead of the tournament format regardless of how banged up she was. I think in terms of this particular show it was scheduled too far ahead of time. On the back of a hot '93, a year or more is a long time to maintain momentum.
  6. ohtani's jacket
    Thirty reasons why the boom ended. Should be a piece of cake for an authority like you.
  7. ohtani's jacket
    Jesse would have been awesome during the NWO angle. I can just picture him hanging out with Hall and Nash promising to call it straight down the middle like he did with the Mega Bucks vs the Mega Powers. I suppose they could have made a run at Lawler, Jerry.
  8. ohtani's jacket
    One thing that crossed my mind is that Heenan played a character in the WWF (former manager turned broadcast journalist) and had a lot of running jokes. In WCW, he was kind of a third wheel. He'd add a joke every now and again, but they weren't that funny and they didn't take up stretches of the commentary like they did in the WWF. Plus, he'd have to make serious comments about feuds or WCW and the NWO and they were never particularly convincing either. But in a two man situation on their taped shows, there was no one for him to play off. I think he would have even struggled with Jim Ross. In a way, Bobby arriving in the booth was almost as jolting and out of place as Hogan's arrival. A bit cartoony compared with the first half of '94.
  9. ohtani's jacket
    I could never figure out why Heenan had no chemistry with anyone in WCW. It wasn't as though his schtick only worked with Monsoon in the WWF. It was pretty effective with McMahon and Piper too. Different style of product?
  10. ohtani's jacket
    You're so full of shit.
  11. ohtani's jacket
    Can't think of too many wrestlers who've been good at guest colour spots, but from the opposite perspective I love Owen Hart promos but he's a guy who's not considered a great promo whom I thought was great on colour.
  12. ohtani's jacket
    So go ahead and give us 30 reasons why the boom ended.
  13. ohtani's jacket
    Jerome, that's all fine and good when you're on vacation, but not everyone wants to do that. I was over doing that in my first year. It may seem like I'm being anal and squabbling over a minor detail, but it really was a stupid thing to do in terms of running a major event in Tokyo.
  14. ohtani's jacket
    I think they laid an egg as far as running the Dome goes (pun intended.) The show has a false rep among Western fans because it was the first time a woman's promotion had run the Tokyo Dome and for the longest time it was pimped alongside Dream Slam I and II as the three best shows ever, whereas in Japan it's generally remembered as being half full and a failure. Whether it really was the jumping off point for a lot of fans is debatable. I tend to think of the 90s Joshi boom as a borrowed audience who were always going to drop Joshi once the novelty wore off, but if you compare it to when the Matsunagas ran Budokan during the 70s boom period there simply wasn't the same care taken with running the Dome. My point about it being one of the worst major shows ever had more to do with the fact that they promoted it all year as the Dangerous Queen Countdown (as you're well aware from watching the yearbook) then reneged on the whole Dangerous Queen deal when they were struggling to draw the following year. That's hardly knocking one out of the park. To me that was a sign of a company in a major decline.
  15. ohtani's jacket
    Hokuto/Kandori is considered one of the greatest Joshi matches of all-time, but people started missing their trains halfway through the match and had to spend the night in Shin-Yokohama station, or so the story goes. That's piss poor time management.
  16. ohtani's jacket
    You missed your train because the show went past 12:30am? I find that hard to believe or that you were staying so far away that you needed to leave around 11. In any case, why would someone on a wrestling trip care as much as a local? I've never been to an event in Tokyo that left people without a train. It's just not done. Anyway, it's a common complaint about the AJW mega shows of that era. They did the same thing with Dream Slam in Yokohama. Worst major show ever, take it or leave it, but Flik asked why I said it was poorly run and I think a 10 hour card that runs over time with a lousy tournament instead of a real card and a proper retirement is a poor showing for such a milestone show. What's funny is that it's even mentioned on the AJW Japanese wiki page.
  17. ohtani's jacket
    Who asked you to give a crap?
  18. ohtani's jacket
    That's funny. John Have you ever missed the last train from Tokyo Dome when you live in Chiba or Saitama or Kanagawa?
  19. ohtani's jacket
    Dunno that I'd put Saint ahead of Michaels and Marty Jones' stock has dropped a bit for me lately after watching some of the non-TWC World of Sport.
  20. ohtani's jacket
    One limiting factor is that, if I'm not mistaken, not that many people have personal computers in Japan. They mainly access the Internet through their cell phones, which is less conducive to that sort of thing. Most people have a laptop.
  21. ohtani's jacket
    I like a number of Tito's matches. His career was a disappointment in terms of matches.
  22. ohtani's jacket
    Shawn is pretty clearly above Tito in the pecking order. Tito's career is a disappointment when it comes to matches.
  23. ohtani's jacket
    Reminds me of the time I came across an 80s Joshi bulletin board where they were posting pictures of crotch shots for everyone to admire. I've seen and read the equivalent of Japanese sleaze threads. It's the internet; all sorts of carry on goes on.
  24. ohtani's jacket
    Looks like a comedy sketch from a variety show. Japanese TV dramas have low budgets. Even the serious ones are cheap looking.
  25. ohtani's jacket
    They were British fans. Don't think that really counts.
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