Matt D

Playing catch up: I liked the Jake/Steiner match quite a bit. You have to love how behind him the crowd was and how excited by it that Boesch seemed to be. Jake was able to give up a lot of the match and hit that lightning DDT. Jake earned all that goodwill from DDP since he took that key element of his babyface act from Jake. I thought Steiner showed a ton of potential as a heel here, actually, and it's a shame that once he turned, we didn't see him as a heel again until 99 when he was over the hill. I'm weirdly tempted to revisit that stuff. We were all so furious as a community that he was going over Benoit and what not that we probably didn't give the actual work a good look. His instincts and crowd interaction was really good. Also really good was Williams in that role. He's such a natural babyface in Houston/Mid-South that it's obviously how he should have been cast but he seemed like he was having so much fun in the Gibson match. And to round out the heels, I can't get enough of heel Duggan. I love the Mil match and I liked this a lot too. He just had this manic energy to him. There's basically a year+ of him being a heel in Houston, so we've got more to come, ideally. Some of the match ups really look fun too. Dusty and Brody (which seems a natural fit) and Wahoo and Rich and Slater and Murdoch and Morton. Varied, interesting opponents. It's something to look forward to. I wish that Sheepherders vs Bruise Brothers went longer. Yes, Houston was super patriotic, but the Russians didn't get the same level of heat that the Sheepherders seemed to. It's amazing watching them go out every time. Babyface Bruise Brothers with that entrance is really cool too. The comeback here, as fleeting as it was, had to be the best moment of Mad Dog Boyd's life, with the crowd getting behind him like that. the Houston crowd really is the best. Good week or two of matches. Keep 'em coming.

Bix, go write something about the Independent Contractor stuff that gets picked up by a bigger news source. Iron's hot.

This is the "rematch," though I can't speak to the quality. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xe4sgd_rockers-jim-duggan-vs-powers-of-pai_sport (and a promo setting it up: )

Like classifying employees as independent contractors?

I'm through the first half, so I can only speak to that, but while Pete is always consistently solid on whatever podcast he's on, I do want to go out of my way to point out that I thought Johnny was excellent and insightful over the first few matches. Earth-3 indeed, Pete (I know you said 5 but you meant 3, though Johnny is the Uncle Dudley of online wrestling).

I'll do a full write up for SC later, but I thought the attempts to win with the corner touching were excellent, actually. In almost every chain match you see, actually trying to win the match is an afterthought, just something brought in for the finish or maybe for a mid-match transition. Here, it was front and center in the back half, and I thought that played perfectly into Jovica's underdog aspect. There was some great symmetry too, with Abdullah blocking the fourth corner on one attempt and then Jovica doing the same immediately thereafter, and some clever bits earlier on like Abdullah rolling out to stop the corner touching and some last second cut offs with Abdullah or Jovica dashing across the ring at the last second. I thought it worked hand in hand with the bloodiness too because it was about each wrestler surviving the war by winning the match. I'm in a different place than most of you on this one.

Watching that match, I thought there WAS a long run of KENTA-Shibata tags. They worked very well together. Most natural thing in the world.

I think some of it is probably how extreme Alexa's character is. She's basically the embodiment of nastiness. You don't want to see that break in the same way that you don't mind other characters breaking. I don't see it as breaking at all. She just reached the pinnacle of her profession, in front of her parents. Seems like a pretty reasonable time to be happy and not a piece of shit for a few minutes. Maybe if she had better parents, she wouldn't be a horrible kayfabe monster? They're probably poachers.

I think some of it is probably how extreme Alexa's character is. She's basically the embodiment of nastiness. You don't want to see that break in the same way that you don't mind other characters breaking.

I had gotten busy with other things, such as Thanksgiving and work and sickness. It's a little harder to watch things this time of year just because so much is going on. I still have a couple of matches GOTNW recommended, but I wanted to get to this one since it bumped the thread. Akira Taue/Go Shiozaki vs. Katsuyori Shibata/KENTA (09/09/06) The best way I can describe this is that it would be a match that I would have probably loved if it wasn't in 2006 NOAH. I completely understand why someone would suggest it to me, but I had a hard time getting past some of the trappings. The basic premise was amazing with KENTA and (especially) Shibata being absolute punks to Taue, just riling him up and mocking him and disrespecting him at every turn. Taue has such goodwill with the crowd and such accumulated meaning and familiarity that they're able to use that as capital in the match. They can tease his moves and the crowd reacts. In that way things don't have to be earned. They just have to be utilized, and they are. Shibata was the real star here. Past a few hard kicks and the ability to move really fast, KENTA didn't show me nearly as much. Shibata was an absolute dick, coming at Taue in weird stalling angles instead of just locking up (Taue responded by teasing a crane kick), making sure to attack him on the apron again and again whenever Shiozaki was in (KENTA does this too). In the States, that would lead to illegal doubleteaming as the ref held back the babyface on the apron, and here that happens once, but it's really much more about the disrespect in this match. He even nailed Shiozaki twice with Taue's jam-head-into-knee for huge mocking heat. My biggest problem with the match was Shiozaki. It's Japan, sure. It's 2006. I get it. In his role, showing fighting spirit and popping up again and again as "hope spots" was more than fine. It got old as the match went on though and it made it hard for anything to resonate too much. This happened all the way to the hot tag, which was just Shiozaki popping up and hitting a strike of his own one more time. It's not that it's unbelievable or that it lessened the meaning of things (though ultimately it did; at times they were going at so quick a pace that nothing had a chance to set in. It was exciting but hollow) or that nothing Shiozaki did ultimately felt earned: it was really just how unimaginative the counters were. There wasn't really a sense of fighting back to me. Instead it was more a decision not to sell. The few times where they did do something, like KENTA and Shiozaki blocking kicks or a foot coming up on top rope move, it all happened too quickly and consequence-free in the grand scheme of things to really resonate. There was a lot to love here, but it was almost all centered around Taue and Shibata. Everytime Taue actually got his hand on Shibata it was gold, early on with him absorbing Shibata's best stuff and firing back to the crowd's delight (ending with him tossing Shibata out and teasing a dive), after the hot tag when Taue had to sustain double-teaming before he could get his hands on him, and the way he had to fight out of a potential doomsday device, hit a second rope big boot and catch KENTA in a nodawa off the top before he could finally hit it on Shibata. By the end I really wanted to see a singles match between the two. So yeah, there was a lot to love here and I though Taue and Shibata both had great performances, but the trappings drag me down. Shiozaki drowned in the expectations which defined him in the match and I feel like 06 KENTA's biggest strengths actually worked out to be his biggest weakness. 3.5 NOAHs (as always, not a match rating). notes:

Working on it.

It's probably a lack of female representation in STEM programs thing.

Where did you get that number? Fujiwara.

I didn't know 48 PWO people had ballots.

I wonder if a lot of the people who think Sting should be in also think Big Daddy should be in.

Do you think there's an argument that Sting's influence case has grown? I'm not saying I agree with it, and if I had a vote I wouldn't vote for Sting, but there's a certain aura around him that has grown in recent years. He's looked at as a legend by a large subject of mainstream wrestling fandom. There's a certain influence that he has. I don't think it sniffs Bryan's influence, or Punk's for that matter, but there's something there. What has he influenced?

I've been half-watching the 81 GCW Kris posted while taking care of some work. Masked Superstar is a really great heel ace. I love that he kicked out the list of accepted challengers.

I for one happily accept our brave new world where Sting, the inspirational force behind John Cena's prototype hair, is in the WON HOF. I will happily brandish such counter-factuals as "Well, if he wasn't in WCW in the early 90s, it would have tanked completely." and tout the fact that Bill Apter suggested to me that if he wasn't a huge draw for PWI covers, they wouldn't have put him on the cover consistently. All is right in the wrestling world.

Loved it. Of course I did. I'll probably do a longer write up at some point. Slater, to me, is an interesting challenger for Bock, and a little different than what we often get. He was a few years older than Martel or Hennig when they challenged him but obviously not nearly as old as guys like Verne or Crusher. He was much more in that Martel/Hennig/Brunzell mode, though, just with a bit more grit. He had a sort of authority with those few extra years, but could still match up with Bockwinkel on the mat. They spent the first third/half of the match going in and out of holds and I never tire of it. Bock is king at this, full of struggle and comeuppance with just spot on timing when it comes to when to move out to a spot and back into the holds. They varied the holds up here. I sort of marvel at this every time I see it. Bock is never lost. He's never at a loss. There's always a sense of escalation. Usually, he can't be caught the same way twice, but he always finds a way to show ass, even in the midst of a clever counter. For instance, he's ready to catch Slater off the ropes in the midsection with a shot, but ends up left open for one of his own. It's just perfect title match wrestling in that regard. The heat comes with the legwork and it's short but nasty. I was wondering what they were going to do with the figure four, because it didn't make sense for Slater to lose a fall by submission. That just seemed against his character, but they handled it well with the posting and the rope draping. Then they moved into revenge spots for the second fall. The third, while short, felt warranted due to the damage they'd gone through in the match. Great match up for Bock and just another notch on his belt. I've said it before, but I come into almost every one of these matches with that hint of doubt. Was I wrong? Was I lacking some evidence. Is this the match that's going to show me that Bockwinkel isn't as good as I think he is. And he just comes through every time reinforcing those elements of his work that are simply the ideal. I'm close to the point where I'm just going to stop worrying about it. This was a total joy. EDIT: Came back to add that some of the pinfall exchange stuff in the first fall seemed a few years ahead of its time too.

I guess my point is that there's a sort of conventional wisdom meaning to it if you were to ask people not here? It's nice to know the genesis of it, but it, like workrate or sprint or anything else, has a certain popular connotation. I get using facts to bully away the guy who was exasperating and full of himself, but if you had asked me yesterday before I read this thread, I'd have probably shrugged and indicated I thought "strong style" was more of an AJPW thing than a NJPW thing and really was mainly about no-selling strike exchanges and hitting each other hard instead of actually working that was then picked up by a lot of 2000 indies as they were trying to emulate what Meltzer gave lots of stars to? Obviously, that would have been factually inaccurate in a lot of ways, but I don't think it would have been unfair, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Overblown No-selling forearm and chop fighting spirit exchanges. That's what my brain says.

The Del Rio loss at Mania against Edge sure didn't help Del Rio.

Did he ever brush the top of the card again? (Though he became injury prone after that to be fair).

I think JR caused a big stink at the time, because people were upset about it. He told everyone to wait and see, because the heel turn and getting the title back for another short run was obviously happening. That completely missed the point, however, which was that the fans wanted to enjoy the unlikely feelgood moment with a babyface Christian for a while. It wasn't that they were worried he was going to get depushed. It's that this was something that mattered to them and it felt like the company swept the rug out from it (as opposed to a heel doing it). The heat was in the wrong place. If they were going to go with a long Christian heel run and there was someone else for them to get behind it might have been different (see Survivor Series 98 where they had a real wealth of riches) but both in the premise and the execution, it was a very big misread of the audience. Fans don't always get what they want, nor should they, but if they do stupid shit, poorly executed, then they should get called on it.

Dibiase vs Murdoch is exactly as good as you'd expect it to be, with Murdoch generally holding an advantage and the vengeance deferred again and again as Ted just tried to punch his way back. Just a great brawl. I kind of loved Conway vs Valentine though. It wasn't a great match, but it was exactly what I look for out of this service, a match from 1978 that hits all the right marks. Valentine's limbwork was varied and nasty and so solid. Conway's selling was really strong. It was structure, in two falls, pretty much exactly how I wanted it to be. They started on the mat with real struggle, Conway fought his way back only to eat a nasty table bump on the outside. Valentine pressed the advantage, held it, and then fell to a spirited comeback before things broke down with the interference in the third fall. Just pitch perfect distilled wrestling. Just what I want to be watching.