ohtani's jacket

It seems a bit excessive to have an Elimination Chamber match in January, but I guess they were capping off 2005. There was a serious lack of star power in this match, and I thought it was poorly laid out. The WWE usually does a better job of milking the drama from these main events, but the eliminations were weak and Michaels and Cena bled for no reason. I guess the booker thought having Masters and Carlito outlast the other wrestlers was some sort of clever twist, but I would have much preferred round 25 of Angle vs. Michaels vs. Cena. Kane's elimination was stupid considering the advantage he'd been given and losing Angle early also made no sense. Even Edge cashing in the the briefcase lacked any sort of suspense. Why they had to roll Vince out to announce the cash-in was beyond me. They should have gone with a surprise run-in instead. Cena's performance here was mediocre, but he didn't have much to work with. This was a waste of 50 minutes.

These two have awesome chemistry, which I discovered for the first time recently when I watched their November bout. I'm not sold on the authenticity of Danielson's heel act, but I do like it when he works nasty dishes out a hurting. The finish here was meant to be a worked shoot that was suppose to drive the internet into a frenzy, but they didn't quite nail the execution of it and the commentators were clueless when it came to putting it over. Fortunately, it didn't detract from the bout too much. It's late in the piece, but 'd go as far to call Danielson/Strong one of the better matchups of the year.

These guys called themselves the UWF.

@Jetlag Went to Tokyo Comic Con today and some university students put on a wrestling show. Japanese university wrestling seems right up your alley.

Not a lot of footage exists, but Pavillón Azteca had a lot of cartoon gimmicks.

This was alright. Tenryu vs. Kobashi was a bit disappointing, though. Not really worth the price of admission.

Really good match. Plenty of drama, especially with AJ's busted mouth. Some sloppy moments, but I thought the commentators did a good job of covering for their mistakes. I'm totally onboard with Joe being the Wrestler of the Year. In fact, I think he won it fairly handily.

That's tough. I think I'd go to Elysee-Montmarte to see George Kidd. I'm a big Henri Le Mao fan too.

This was a very good match. Danielson continues to cultivate his heel champ gimmick here. it feels like he's cosplaying at times. Danielson is a good wrestler but that's a performance area where I definitely feel he's overrated. It's when he's locked in and delivering an ass kicking that he truly shines. I'd never seen Strong before and had idea what to expect. Turns out he's a compact and well-rounded worker. He was definitely game in this. He took a licking and kept on ticking. The ending where Danielson decided he'd finally had enough of Strong coming back at him was one of the best finishes I've ever seen. The commentator mentioned another match between these two from the week before. i definitely need to check that out.

BIg, dumb NOAH pro-wrestling. Dave loved this. I can understand why, but I think we've all seen these tropes done better in other matches.

This was much better than the previous Canek match. In fact, it was actually a decent little match with some nice momentum swings and some cool side beefs throughout. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Mr. Niebla is a name I haven't typed in a while. A quick search reveals he hasn't been on TV since March. I assume it's because of an injury, but I'm too lazy to check. Casas puts in one of his best performances in a while and is the glue that holds this together. Ultimo struggles to begin with, but as soon as he starts brawling with Perro, and throwing a gazillion kicks, it almost feels vintage Ultimo. Perro acts a bit odd throughout, but he has great chemistry with Casas. This won't set anyone's world on fire, but I wish all of the matches were laid out with this much respect for classic trios structure.

I'm not sure what they were doing bringing Canek in. i guess he was a running mate of Wagner's on the indy circuit. This was a whole bunch of nothing. Even Santo couldn't salvage it. Bucanero & Tarzan Boy were there for the workrate but produced zilch. Bucanero continues to be a disappointment. I don't know what happened to the guy. He used to be one of the best workers in the company and must-see viewing, but he's fallen off badly. I can only assume it has something to do with injuries.

I probably wrote about it on another site or in a different thread. This thread began well after tellumyort began uploading matches from the Wrestling Channel. That was a fun time. I miss the excitement of checking out his daily uploads.

Bob Backlund & Ivan Putski vs. Jerry Valiant & Johnny Valiant (WWF, 7/21/79) The esteemed elliott calls this one of the best WWF tag matches of all-time, but I can't quite figure out why. It seems very similar to other WWF tag matches where one partner is injured and forced to leave the ring and the partner fights on two-against-one. Putski did look pretty good. I am gonna make a wild guess that he didn't look this good very often. Huge disappointment for me that the match doesn't continue when Backlund returns from the back. Bob Backlund vs. Killer Khan (WWF, 4/18/81) This match was nowhere near as bad as I imagined it would be. It's very much a Bob Backlund wrestles Killer Khan and they do some light shtick match as opposed to one of Killer Khan's wild brawls or a match from a classic Backlund feud, but really the only problem with it is that it's too damn short. I was just starting to get into it and then it was over.

Sonny Myers vs Baron Arena (NWA Chicago, 1955) Verne Gagne vs Bobby Nelson (NWA Chicago, 1955) The first match had already been uploaded by the Chicago Film Archives with some people suggesting in the comments section that it was from earlier than 1955. The Gagne match doesn't appeared to have been uploaded by the CFA. Gagne is one of the greatest wrestlers to ever lace a pair of boots in my estimation but this isn't much of a wrestling contest. Nelson had recently turned heel and was working on a new ornery style of wrestling. All of the best bits involved Gagne retaliating to Nelson's bullshit. Gagne was pretty good at dishing out shit of his own, so the match flowed okay, but I would have liked to have seen Verne wrestle a bit more.

This should have been better. Let them brawl and bleed a bit. As it stood, it was little more than an angle to set up their hair match. It was basically WWE style programming only I'd argue that the work was better in WWE TV matches. I'm not getting my hopes up about the hair match.

This was the second eliminator cibernetico for the Leyenda de Plata. I didn't find it as engaging as the first eliminator. There wasn't a lot of high level talent in the match, and for the first time I found Atlantis' rudo act kind of boring. Ultimo Dragon did better than expected, but even with editing the match plodding along in fits and starts. There were a lot of miscues from Mistico and Sagrada, including a suplex from Sagrada that appeared to knock Maximo out cold. Things appeared to heat up towards the end when Mistico eliminated Mephisto and squared off against Atlantis but a terrible finish ruined that matchup. Santo run in to make the save at the end, which was the highlight of the bout. I'm looking forward to watching their match again after so many years, but I'm kind of dreading CMLL's circus bullshit.

This was edited in a way that made it seem like non-stop action. The cuts were a bit haphazard at times, but it came across as an enjoyable highlights package. Jado had a solid run in this as a nondescript Takaiwa style junior working an ass kicker role in a lucha cibernetico. Santo did a bunch of signature spots, but he did them in a way that made him seem like he was one of the best workers in the world. I really liked his amazing side belly-to-belly suplex off the top that eliminated Averno. That was such an unexpected badass elimination in this type of match. It came down to Santo vs. Casas in the end. It had been a while since Arena Mexico had seen them square off, so there was plenty of excitement in the air. It wasn't vintage Santo vs. Casas, but not bad. The only problem with it was that they booked an extra fall that Santo won in only 13 seconds. They should have gone longer than that. Not sure whose bright idea that was.

I was saddened to hear about the passing of Brain Goldbelt Maxine. 86 is a fair old knock, though.

Johnny Smith vs. Chris Benoit (CWA 8/1/91) This is a decent match. Smith works as a de facto heel, which is odd since there's nothing really heelish about him. He's announced as "The Dynamite Kid." Not sure if they were trying to fob him off as the real thing. Benoit puts in a solid shift as the babyface.

Different week, same match. They're not even bothering to flip the script at this point. Universo snaps and piledrivers poor Damian, but it just leads to the same apuestas challenges, etc.

More of the same. They brawl a little, one side gets disqualified and there's a beatdown followed by promos about hair matches. This feud is dragging on forever.

That's from a decade later. Verdu did end up working in Germany a fair bit in the later part of his career, but as I said, Der Henker was a pre-existing gimmick and we've seen different wrestlers don the mask gimmicks before.

I don't think Crusher Verdu is Der Henker, fwiw. Der Henker was a gimmick that had been used by Goldstein. I have no idea who is under the mask, but he has a far better build than Verdu.

The parts where they row out to the ring or where they swim back to poolside?