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ohtani's jacket

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Everything posted by ohtani's jacket

  1. ohtani's jacket
    It was too long and went past the last train times. You don't book anything to go past the last train times in Japan. Plus they reneged on Hokuto's retirement, which made the whole thing bullshit. Honestly, Big Egg has to be a contender for worst major show ever.
  2. ohtani's jacket
    The podcast was cool. On the subject of El Dandy, his WCW stint seemed to kill his career in Mexico. Not sure if it's a coincidence or if Paco hates him or what, but that three way hair match is pretty much the end of Dandy's run in Mexico.
  3. ohtani's jacket
    Chigusa/Ozaki was the best match on this show.
  4. ohtani's jacket
    McManus and Pallo should be in, and since the threshold has been lowered so far for other countries most of the luchadores should be in as well.
  5. ohtani's jacket
    I only watched the final match. It was short but a decent enough sprint. It wasn't the sort of all-out match you'd expect from a tag league final, however, and I think the slackness with which AJW booked both the Grand Prix and TLTB in '94 was pretty telling in terms of them losing their edge. They really got lazy cashing in on the interpromotional stuff. Big Egg Universe was poorly run, and if that alienated fans then the booking sure wasn't about to hook them back in.
  6. ohtani's jacket
    This was okay, but it wasn't a very compelling performance from Takako and turned into just another Toyota match. Personally, I liked Takako's work from '93 better than this.
  7. ohtani's jacket
    This was all right, but not a whole lot happened and it didn't seem that special to me. Even with the fresh match-up, Hokuto/Kansai, it still felt like a run of the mill, spotty elimination match.
  8. ohtani's jacket
    Yeah, but Hogan fans will say things like, "look at how he timed that atomic drop on Bobby Heenan to get the maximum reaction from the crowd, that was so good" when all it was was an atomic drop and not timed particularly well. Personally, I think he was too tall with too much muscle mass to be a good worker. Others might argue that he moved well in the ring, but I've never seen it.
  9. ohtani's jacket
    You can find it on youtube.
  10. ohtani's jacket
    An interesting match to compare this with is the Toyota/Yamada match from a few days later. That match has a better beginning as they have some cool strike exchanges (Toyota may come across as shy and awkward in promos but man is she foul mouthed in the ring.) The stretch run isn't quite as exciting as Toyota/Kyoko, but in a way it's more focused. There are a few too many reversal attempts, and Toyota has the upperhand to a greater extent (making the finish rather obvious), but it all makes sense. (Or maybe I'm just getting my Joshi mojo back.) I never really liked Yamada in the past, but there seems to be a new appreciation for her these days because of her stand up game and Chigusa-like moveset. She was good in this match, though her star had clearly waned.
  11. ohtani's jacket
    This was a good match. People who like Joshi will enjoy it and people who don't won't, but I thought after a perfunctory beginning it developed into a long and exciting stretch run. The finish isn't quite as epic as they might have liked, and Toyota's botches hurt the rhythm a bit even if they're mostly covered well, but it was one Joshi match from 1994 where I wasn't begging for it to end. The thing I always liked about Kyoko is how she was able to convey the joy of performing. She doesn't get to really shine here but I was reminded of how likeable she is. People are probably aware of this from watching her promos but after six years of living in Japan I can tell you she's the type of person you'd love to hang out with. She has the same charisma as a TV comedian and seems like an awesome person. You can tell she's not from Tokyo, that's for sure.
  12. ohtani's jacket
    One has half an hour of defensive matwork and the other has pro-wrestling spots, I guess. I noticed Fujiwara/Fuke was in your top 50 for 1992. 1990 has matches more along those lines rather than something like Fujiwara/Malenko.
  13. ohtani's jacket
    Weren't those closer to pro-style matches?
  14. ohtani's jacket
    Can't really see the Dory Funk comparison as Fujiwara has Terry Funk charisma in my eyes, but perhaps 1990 will be the make or break set.
  15. ohtani's jacket
    I don't think it's going to happen. The closest Fujiwara got to the type of wrestling you seem to like was his 80s New Japan run. Have you seen the match he had with Choshu in '87? I didn't like it because I have funny ideas about Japanese pro-wrestling but everybody else did.
  16. ohtani's jacket
    How do you figure? What did Hogan do that was anything you wouldn't expect from a professional wrestling match? Hogan personifies doing the basics. You can't honestly say that his schtick was extraordinarily better than any other babyface. Hogan was over regardless of his matches. They were a formality, some of which were more entertaining than others. Do you really think that the way Hogan sells and all his mannerisms are better than anybody else? Or the reason he got heat for that matter? He was effective if effective means carrying out a match, but why praise him for doing simple stuff well? All you're doing is setting the bar ridiculously low for Hogan. The first time I ever saw Hogan was in 1988 when he returned after some kind of absence post Wrestlemania IV. Prior to that, Dibiase, Andre, Bobby and Savage had been cutting promos in the early stage of the build-up to the SummerSlam main event. So, the first time I saw him the music hit, he came out from behind the curtain, the crowd went nuts, etc. Hogan was a sensation and for much of the 80s it was like a locomotive. There was nothing innately special about Hogan making an entrance other than he was extremely over and that was contagious. Hogan obviously had qualities that made him popular, but did he really do anything that set him apart? I can't think of anything. Well, there was the entrance and the pose down afterwards, but there needed to be something in the middle and sure as hell wasn't going to be reliant on Hogan as a worker. I can understand people liking Hogan for whatever reason, but do you really get excited when Hogan executes an atomic drop or something like that? It's just basic pantomime.
  17. ohtani's jacket
    Every halfway decent babyface in the history of the business has been able to follow the script to the extent that Hogan did in that match. Just because Hogan was more over than just about every halfway decent babyface in the history of the business doesn't mean that he did something extra special. If Hogan's so spectacular then why do they need a three ring circus in Danny Davis, Bobby Heenan and the cage? Hogan wasn't bad or anything, but it's not as though he did anything special to draw heat.
  18. ohtani's jacket
    This match was so great. Really cements Fujiwara as the best worker in Japan from 1990-94.
  19. ohtani's jacket
    It's not hogan that changed. It's us. Well, I watched the Orndorff cage match and it was a fun match because of Jesse and Vince and Orndorff and Bobby in that order. I'm not trying to be contrary, but Hogan didn't do a single thing in the match that I would consider noteworthy. I guess you could argue that he was effective at following the script, so to speak, but that's the job of a professional wrestler. Nobody's going to accuse Hogan of not knowing the basics.
  20. ohtani's jacket
    I can't understand this revisionism that Hogan was effective. Somebody point to the one match for a skeptic like me.
  21. ohtani's jacket
    Hogan and Warrior had a very unfair advantage in Wrestlefest -- their slam would eliminate people over the top rope. I always went DiBiase and he didn't have a slam so had to get a pin or submission. Great game. Are you talking about the Royal Rumble? Anybody could throw someone over the ropes in that game.
  22. ohtani's jacket
    I finally got around to watching this and I guess the answer was that it was just different from a typical WWE match with Lesnar bringing the quasi-shoot style stuff and working stiffer than expected. It was kind of a one note match, but not bad. I thought it started off well and lost steam when Brock started bringing the ringpost and steel steps into play. Cena getting zero offense and then winning with a steel chain wrapped round his fist and a single finisher on the steps was kind of weird, but Brock winning would've been equally weird after beating the crap out of Cena for the entire match. I'm not sure I'd call it a spectacle since it wasn't that spectacular compared to say your typical Undertaker/Triple H/Shawn Michaels Wrestlemania extravaganza, at least in terms of how things operate in the WWE Universe, but it was certainly different.
  23. ohtani's jacket
    I don't think they pay off the Hokuto/Kandori storyline particularly well. The match is four different match-ups happening at the same time and not very well laid out. The first Hokuto/Kandori match was perfect and didn't need to be expanded upon. Hokuto won but learnt her lesson at the same time. This match was kind of messy like it didn't know whether it was about the bitter regret about Hokuto's pending retirement or a resolution between the heat between Kandori and Hokuto or both, but really Hokuto should have moved on from being a bitch to Kandori. I don't think that aspect worked well at all. But more than that it just doesn't play out in the ring that well. Aja and Bull are unfocused in their attack and there isn't the heat segments you'd expect that deal with the uneasy Hokuto/Kandori alliance. You kind of expect them to go all FIP on Hokuto or something and it never really happens. The abuse she sustains is the abuse she sustained in every match. The part where Kandori finally starts acting like a partner to Hokuto didn't have much effect and the whole thing seemed like they were just winging a long match. I'm kind of down on all wrestling atm, but that's how I felt about it a decade or so after the last time I watched it.
  24. ohtani's jacket
    I don't know that they were announced beforehand, but they were premeditated.
  25. ohtani's jacket
    Hadn't watched this in a long time. God it took forever. If they'd trimmed the fat it really would have been one of the greatest matches of all time instead of an overwrought epic.
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