Matt D

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.

While I'll be interested to see just how much of the BT, Jr. stuff is going to show up on powerbomb, my wrestling tastes and time limitations are at a point that I'm not going to be dropping money on anything that's not frequently unearthing unseen matches from 78-86. I am glad that people will soon be awash in more content than they know what to do with though.

Is the idea of "Burning Out a Territory" a myth? Did Southwest go overboard with the blood and violence in the 80s to the point where the fans had seen it all? That's the traditional narrative.

Is there a reason why the Owen Hart bio issue of the Observer (May 31, 1999) isn't on the site? It goes from May 24 to June 7.

I too am getting the black friday deal, but mainly to pick up the 98-99 WONs I don't have yet.

Pretty sure there's a Brass Knucks Battle Royal main event, but I'm not 100% on that.

I know multiple kids who stopped watching out of fear of Papa Shango.

I'd like to hear Bret justify the difference between the ringpost bump and the Flair flop. That's not all that hard. Direct vs Indirect. Whether you buy that justification is another matter, but I think it's pretty easy to differentiate. The issue with signature defensive spots is also a direct vs indirect thing. They often rely on the other wrestler doing something that he wouldn't normally do. It's the difference between doing something to a wrestler and having him do something to you. If it's something he'd do anyway, in that way and at that time in a match, great! If it's not, then it causes dissonance. It raises a flag. If it happens as a signature spot in a "Powerbombing Kidman" sort of way, then it raises a huge red flag. It's one reason why the 619 was so effective relatively. That was almost always Rey actively doing something to his opponent to get him into that spot, even if it was using a reversal to do it. It was rarely him reversing something that was outlandish for his specific opponent to do.

I think Dawson's ring positioning stood out as a major positive to me in that match. Dash was far more lacking in that regard but they made it work with their struggle and reactions. Dawson came off hugely precise and polished to me. That was pretty much my only non-structural comment on the match.

# of overall title reigns?

TA vs Kelly Kiniski is a perfectly fine young lions opening match. It's early into Magnum's career, which is always cool to see. They work a very simple match, shine headlock, heat headscissors, come out and finish. It's a bit clumsy but the effort level is there and the exuberance makes it worth spending ten minutes on. There are moments where an exchange doesn't go quite as smoothly as it should and it works all the more for it because of the realness in them trying to grab to recover. Also fun is Boesch lauding the first female director they ever had on Houston wrestling. The top of this show looks like a blast too, so hopefully we get it.

Balor, Bayley, Cass, Carmella could for NXT in ten years.

To be fair, 1982 Houston technology looks like this:

It's much more of an Indy gimmick but the fact he can work it into the match puts him over a guy like Enzo who is mostly entrance.

Slater vs Tully/Gino is quickly becoming another one of those legendary feuds as we get more and more of the pieces. I think we have most of the big ones now. There are a couple more tags I'd like to see (Especially the Brody cage matches), plus the footage of when they injure Slater that led to this specific set of matches. And I guess there has to be a turn at some point since Slater was teaming with them just a week or two before he started to wrestle Gino. The high moments have been great though and this was no different. I'm with Pete on this. Manny was big in Houston but a lot of that footage (both as a face and a heel) just hasn't turned up yet. It's obvious that he just got it so intrinsically though, knowing exactly when to play to the crowd and how much anticipation to put into things. He was a ham of sorts, but in a way that really connected. Tully was just a total joy in this. He walked the perfect line between total stooging and a sort of stubborn toughness. They managed to cover a lot of ground in relatively little time. The limbwork was a lot of fun. The KO knee in the second fall was awesome. All of the end match stuff was so heated and violent. And even though it was half the time, Slater vs Tully was hugely economical too. Both of them were coming in hurt and that played into the time they had, keeping in mind, of course, Slater's huge advantage. Great, lost feud.

"Sure Canada. We'll give you a PPV again....."

They do the Pink versions for Breast Cancer Awareness month. They could do blue and red of the normal merch and probably make money, yeah.

The only things with any stakes are the title matches. If they were going to go this route, they had to come up with some sort of stake other than "brand pride."