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Edwin

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Everything posted by Edwin

  1. Edwin
    Going through the thread I thought folks were being overly critical, but yikes, this was not good. The first 2 falls felt rushed and the third fall had some OK brawling with some big dives and the crowd going wild, but it wasn't special. The Rey missed top rope moonsault to the floor was crazy. I thought this would be good as Rey and Psicosis were on opposing teams the previous 2 weeks and those were great. I'll take Indómito teaming up with Psicosis against Rey and handcuffing than Mr. Condor and Heavy Metal here. The opening match between Misterioso, Pantera del Ring & Volador vs. Jerry Estrada, Tony Arce and Vulcano was better than this.
  2. Edwin
    Everyone hating on the Konnan run in is missing the context of it. It's part of what happened the prior week. Perro had mano a mano match with Fishman and Cien Caras came out and they put a beatdown on him. They left him bloodied in the ring as Cien was stomping his head in with cowboy boots. In the post match interview, Perro called for Konnan to join him in his battle against Fishman and Cien. That's noteworthy when watching this. I can get why it's not appealing to folks out of context, but leaving that out isn't helpful as it's straightforward booking.
  3. Edwin
    I saw this live at Performance Center (haven't seen this on tape yet), but live this was a blast. Cruz Montana is the AFKA Mike Santana from LAX. He's been around for years now. Dion Lennox is a former NFL player which is a great background to use to transition to pro-wrestling. First time seeing him and he looked very good here, although this was mostly called by Cruz who's the veteran here. The story going into this is Cruz is a hot head with a sketchy past and who's had to work hard for everything he's achieved; meanwhile Dion is the pro athlete who is genetically gifted and who's won many opportunities due to his athletic abilities. Cruz is built as 5'10 and Dion at 6'2, but that can't be right as they were equally as big and both guys are much taller than 5'10. This genuinely felt like a true modern heavyweight pro-wrestling brawl where the high spots were kept to a minimum and the heat was brought by 2 big guys who had a score to settle. The match was built around the hot head Cruz putting a beatdown on Dion and boy did he. I'm sure at some point in his early career Cruz was on the end of some of those JAPW early 2000s Low Ki beatdowns and now 20 years later he's the one dishing it out because man did he put a beatdown on Dion. Everything Cruz threw looked tremendous. Dion was mostly on the end of the beatdown, but even then when on offense he was throwing heat back at Cruz. More one sided in favor of Cruz than evenly matched, but it worked in this scenario as it was Cruz fighting out of anger for everything Dion and his guys had said about Cruz and his personal issues. We don't get a clean finish, but again, it made sense given the story developing as Cruz completely loses it and wipes out Dion and his crew. This really came across like a clean and properly produced vintage JAPW brawl from the early 2000s. Made me want to watch more Cruz and Dion than anything else. As I mentioned previously, Cruz I was familiar with from his time in LAX, but as a singles he's truly come into his own and developed a lot. I went to the tapings to watch Wagner Jr.'s kids vs. the BirthRight (which was alright) and came out blown away by this. Really, really good under-the-radar match.
  4. Edwin
    This entire rivalry has been money. This was no different. This match is fire. This entire feud is more of a WWC Puerto Rico-style feud than a CMLL feud. Even the pre-match videos ahead of the matches are filmed like they were for WWC. The endless arena brawling feels WWCish. This rivalry was also built on Pierroth returning to Mexico from a lengthy tour of Puerto Rico and he betrayed Mexico and claimed he was Puerto Rican now. That should give an indication that Pierroth had a hand in booking this. The entire match itself keeps up with the theme of the feud with everyone just going nuts fighting all over the arena while the crowd is going crazy. Even Alushe runs down the ramp at one point and attacks El Boricua from behind with a baseball bat. Villano III getting his leg stuck in a ringside seat and Universo 2000 blasting him with kicks gave me flashbacks of when Fuerza Guerrera tied Octagón's mask to the bottom rope. Villano III picking up a pack of 3 chairs and just whacking Pierroth with it was great. What a spectacle. What a brawl. What a feud. Love it.
  5. Edwin
    I've watched a lot of lucha recently and CMLL is far from what it once was. Despite the praise some of the matches have gotten, they don't hit imo. However, I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this. It's a torneo cibernetico between Brillante Jr. (Andrade's cousin), Capitán Suicida, Dragón Legendario, Fugaz, Futuro, Hombre Bala Jr., Max Star, Pantera Jr., Rey Pegasus and Valiente Jr. for the Daniel García cup (Huracán Ramírez, not the other one from AEW). All 10 men are looking to breakthrough and they go balls to the walls from the start. There's really no downtime, but everything looks clean and fluid. Not an all-time classic, not a MOTYC and probably won't make a top 10 list for the year, but it's one of the matches I've enjoyed the most from what I've watched from CMLL this year.
  6. Edwin
    More of an angle more so than a match. One of the most sadistic and wildest angles I've ever seen. No hyperbole. Sullivan attacks Kanemura before the bell and Kanemura bleeds buckets. It looked like a scene from a horror movie.
  7. Edwin
    The Roman entrance was epic and you gotta love Punk's pre walkout video with AFI and with him wearing his old ROH black jacket. I've seen a lot of folks call this one of the best WM matches of all-time and I thought it was good, but not quite that good. There was plenty to dig like Punk getting juice off the big stair shot while in the tree of woe, Punk's exhausting selling where he was tumbling near the end, Punk tossing the tape at the ref. and hitting Reigns with the low blow before hitting the GTS, etc. This was quite long brawl, but that was to be expected and this never dragged as something key was always happening. I think a re-watch on this will be due at some point as I think I'll like it better without having watched as much wrestling beforehand. Regardless, this was still great.
  8. Edwin
    You know this was going to brought up. This was brief and exactly what it needed to be. Two giants throwing bombs and bumping big. Closer to Brock's second WM match with Goldberg than his other WM matches in length and style. Although it wasn't quite at that level. Career making performance and passing of the torch.
  9. Edwin
    This was awesome. The double press slam from LOD on Hogan and Tenryu is one of the most surreal spots you'll see. Hogan and Hawk are bleeding, hitting each other with chair shots and flinging tables at each other. Meanwhile Tenryu is getting tossed into the crowd and bumping for Animal. Words can't do this justice as to how entertaining this is.
  10. Edwin
    I liked this a lot, but there's two knocks on this. One has been said which was Goto popping up fairly quickly from the piledriver through the table. The other was Goto clearly blading during the initial headbutt exchange. You can see him quickly digging the blade into his forehead after every headbutt. I would say I'm one of the biggest Onita fans on here and am probably the biggest Goto fan on here and will say this was good, maybe even very good, but not great and not a MOTYC or anything imo.
  11. Edwin
    Mr. Pogo's manager was Victor Quiñones. Quiñones worked in the Puerto Rico office with Carlos Colón and Victor Jovica. Pogo was touring Puerto Rico at the time so I'm sure that's where they met. Quiñones was also the founder of IWA JAPAN and IWA Puerto Rico and he was one of the key figures behind WWE Super Astros.
  12. Edwin
    Phenomenal match. Even before it starts, the crowd is hot for it. More so a WWE style match than a Dome style match, but it's still phenomenal as Macho Man and Sherri do a fantastic job heeling it up. Not much else I can add that hasn't already been said.
  13. Edwin
    This ruled. Kurisu is a fella who's stood out in FMW as he's more featured there as a main event player against Onita than he was in New Japan where I mostly saw him eating pins in multi man matches. This isn't as wild as the street fight with Dragon Master and Tarzan Goto, but this is a nice Korakuen Hall brawl along that line. Kurisu isn't afraid of laying in his offense and Onita is a madman and isn't afraid of getting all recked in barbed wire. They do an an excellent job building around the gimmick and this isn't an over the top FMW bloodbath, but Onita gets his back sliced up with the barbed wire.
  14. Edwin
    Not much else I can add here. This was really good. Love the intense exchanges between Tenryu and Choshu like everyone else seemed to have. Even though it wasn't a traditional tie up, it was still super tense between and the crowd ate it up. Gotta say I dig Takano much more as himself at heavyweight than as the Cobra at Jr. heavyweight. At heavyweight he looks more comfortable and is much more toned down than at Jr. heavyweight where he looked like he was trying to run through everything and even popped immediately from tombstone piledrivers at times.
  15. Edwin
    This was an absolute blast. I don't think it's too distracting, but I'll say contrary to everyone else that Perfect's bumping is a bit too over the top and nearly cartoonish. Dug him getting arrogant and letting Hogan go at the 2 count because the Genius wanted to get the pin and it backfired. Also dug Hogan tagging himself back in and trying to the glory from Warrior leading up to their Mania match.
  16. Edwin
    Yeah, this was really good. Not much I can really add, but I'll reinforce what was said about Buzz Sawyer. I wasn't a big fan, but between this and his matches in Mid South, I was blown away by his performances.
  17. Edwin
    It's cool seeing Taker referred to as Kane the Undertaker. It makes It's gotta be Kane reveal at Hell in the Cell a cool callback. The match itself is a brief typical jobber TV squash match with the featured wrestler hitting all of his signature spots and finisher. The finish looked brutal as you can see Mancini clearly landing on his head. A neat historical bit.
  18. Edwin
    I've watched this a few times through the years and have liked it previously, but I don't as much now as I did previously. It's not bad by any stretch as they both work great together and their work is snug, but the pinning attempts through me off and the shin guards are a gimmick that haven't aged well. Some of the pin attempts make sense as they're just countering moves and eventually land pins in the counters, but sometimes they go straight for pins off instinct. That's fine and all, but it affects the flow of the match. The shin guards just look goofy. The crowd gets a kick out of them working with and around them, but it looks goofy. Also, why did Valentine climb to the top rope? He didn't even hint at a fake dive and it looked like it was choreographed for him to get slammed off it as he did.
  19. Edwin
    What an oddity. I had no idea this existed and I had no idea and wouldn't have guessed it was Ranger Ross impersonating Muta. He doesn't do a horrible job imitating Muta, but the power elbow looked nothing like Muta's and he hit the handspring elbow with the wrong elbow as he swung his right elbow back but Cazana was to his right. Worth noting the moonsault was nowhere near as clean as Muta's either. It didn't help the crowd wasn't invested at all in this.
  20. Edwin
    This isn't pro-wrestling. It's an exhibition grappling tag team match. There's not much viable cooperation, but they do go half speed because it's an exhibition. GCM was a combat sports promotion that had many events where they would feature MMA and grappling bouts. Yoshiyuki Yoshida and Dan Hardy who fought in the UFC and Hidetaka Monma who ventured into pro-wrestling fought for GCM. Aside from GCM, there's several other smaller MMA promotions that had grappling and MMA bouts on their cards like ZST, for example. ZST was one of the smaller promotions that was founded by RINGS. ZST had grappling tag team bouts and they are were also pioneers of the MMA tag team bouts where folks would have to tag in and out to compete. Those MMA bouts were shoots, not exhibitions. The reason these tag team bouts aren't recorded on any of the major combat sports databases like Sherdog or Tapology is because these databases solely focus on standard 1 vs. 1 bouts which is what grappling and MMA were founded on and is what the Unified Rules play by.
  21. Edwin
    This was phenomenal. Two of the best of all-time just battling it out in a big tournament match with a heavily invested hot crowd. Every strike thrown looks effective and is sold. Hashimoto yanking Tenryu into the DDT midway through was great as it looked like a proper struggle and not two guys getting into place or cooperating for it. Hashimoto countering Tenryu's dive off the top with the spinning kick was perfectly timed. The finish was great with Hashimoto getting one big move in and they called it. No excessive finishing exchanges. No endless 2.99999999999 kickouts out. Nothing. Just a big move and a clean finish. Finishes like that are why I prefer New Japan to All Japan in this era. I felt All Japan overdid it many times and I know New Japan had matches where it happened as well, but it wasn't frequent. Love how they kept it brief and didn't have to run an extensive long 40 minute drawn out match. That is another one of the main reasons I favor New Japan over All Japan in the era as well. Well, with the exception of Hansen who would keep a lot of his big matches to around 25 minutes. Either way, you don't have to go 40 minutes every time to for it to be a classic. This is the kind of match that makes me wish we could've replaced Kawada as a Three Musketeer and Muto as a Pillar. Kawada excelled in any setting, but I think he would've been even better in these New Japan sub 20 minute matches and I think Muto would've been good in the longer drawn out All Japan matches. Any and all modern wrestlers need to see this. More of this and less blatant thigh slap heavy strikes. This is what a proper strike exchanges should look like. This is proof you don't need to have to a long drawn out match and go 40 minutes every time. This is proof you don't have to excessively reck your body with endless high risk spots. This is proof endless false finish 2.999999999999 kickouts aren't always needed. I'm not super high on giving matches star ratings, but this is one I'd give the full five to as it's everything I love about pro-wrestling.
  22. Edwin
    Caught a clip of this and Kingston saying he studied Kawada's matches religiously only for Kawada to tell him with a serious and disappointed face he doesn't get paid for people to watch his matches was funny.
  23. Edwin
    Mauro was good on commentary before he joined NXT. I recall hearing him during PRIDE, Strikeforce, etc. and not being annoyed by him. Once he began working weekly TV in NXT he got annoying as he got himself some attention because of the catchphrase. I partially blame the NXT fans for that as they kept applauding him for it (they were also constantly clamoring for the unfunny Bugez air guitar gimmick). I recall him even asking if he should throw in the catchphrase during commentary because sure, that's what mattered. Also, his nonstop unrelated cultural reference one liners get tiresome, too. They have him do commentary for PBC cards and I check out once he begins interrupting the other commentators to throw in these lame one liners.
  24. Edwin
    I listened to the Gunther interview with Cody and began listening to the interview with Taker. Not only is he the best in the ring, but he's the best outside of it, too. Cody asked him what he did when fans would approach him and ask him to chop them and he explained he didn't because he was a pro and they aren't. That response caught Cody off guard as he had mentioned previous to the question that other wrestlers would put fans in holds if they asked. In his interview with Taker he said his goal was never to make it to WWE which made Taker open up and admit that wasn't his goal either and that his goal was to go to WCW, but we all know how that ended up playing out. I'm not from the "Fed bad" crowd, but it's refreshing to listen to someone say something differently than everyone else. Also caught some clips of Miz interview with Taker. Miz mentioned he worked indies when he was starting his career after the Real World. He mentioned wrestling in UPW and having trained with Samoa Joe and Hardkore Kidd. He also said he reached out to ZERO-ONE to do some tours, but they turned him down. That completely caught me off guard as I had no idea about any of that.
  25. Edwin
    Great idea to start the PPV with an energetic tag match like this. This is supposed to be a Rockers showcase match, but I came away wanting to watch more Pat Tanaka. He was incredible in this. His flying forearm cutoff was awesome. Yeah, this was phenomenal.
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