Matt D

This is vaguely unrelated but I was flabbergasted how terrible the crowd for that House of Glory match between Kamaitachi and Dickerson posted on youtube was. It's the worst crowd I've seen in ages.

Wahoo from Tully is pretty much everything you'd want from a 10 minute Wahoo vs Tully match where Wahoo took 85% of the match. Tully bumps around the ring for him like a madman and Wahoo is completely unsympathetic. A lot of fun plus it's cool to see Wahoo and JYD interact in the post match promo.

I know, Marty. I've got a list of matches to go through right now. I'm not dissuaded from moving forward. I'm going to hit my list (which isn't long) and then I'll fill in other suggestions and double back on some things.

Poor Dick Slater.

It was a quick scale-up for a Friday morning, jumping from Kobashi vs Inoue to this. That's all. Granted, most of the 20+ minute matches I watch these days are 2/3 falls which leads to a different sort of structuring with natural breaks. I thought this match had very clear natural breaks so it hardly mattered as much.

Kobashi vs Akiyama 8-6-00 Hell, what do I do with this one? Alright, for the most part, this had me until the finishing stretch. It was a very straightforward story. Akiyama and Kobashi were mostly even to start (with a slight advantage to Kobashi I'd say). Akiyama tried to escalate things on the outside. It backfired. Kobashi capitalized with a power bomb on the floor and started to nastily work over Akiyama's neck. Akiyama got hope spots in but they generally cost him by opening him up for the next move, which is, I think an underutilized way to give weight to them. Finally, though, he hit a desperation low dropkick to the knee and followed it with a lot of grounded holds. Ultimately, Akiyama thought Kobashi was softened up enough for a Northern Lights. He wasn't, and Kobashi hit two big suplexes to get back into it. They traded bombs until Akiyama landed multiple Exploder Suplexes and locked in a guillotine for the pass-out win. That's the match. There was a lot to like. Obviously, these two are excellent at portraying hierarchy and struggle in the feeling out process. They know how to milk a slight advantage in a single exchange and make every early chop mean something to the crowd. They don't just rush at each other again and again. After Kobashi got the better of an exchange, Akiyama went out to the floor and let it all sink in before they reset and went to the next. I appreciate that. Otherwise, the limbwork made the match, both the focused offense and the respective selling. Kobashi just torqued Akiyama's neck in the most grisly ways. I don't think neck selling is the easiest thing in the world to portray. It involves more of the entirety of the body than hobbling about with a leg. Akiyama presented it as a sluggishness, a weight upon him, that I thought was effective. Moreover, when he took out Kobashi's leg, he wasn't immediately back up hitting dragon screws or knee-breakers. His recovery from the neck damage was believable due to the time he spent on the mat locking on different and interesting holds. I loved how both wrestlers tried to control the body of the other in holds in order to prevent rope breaks, whether it be wrapping a leg around the head or just trying to press an arm against the body. I had a few problems with it though. Let's get the easy one out of the way first. I'm a little iffy on Kobashi's selling. I'm 100% okay with him dropping in the transition to the third act, when he blocked the Northern Lights Suplex and hit the headlock suplex/sleeper suplex. A burst of adrenaline in a transition spot is completely believable and he started selling again immediately there after as he worked back to gain control. The problem is that he made a point to start really selling again towards the end, which was, in part, why Akiyama was able to get the ultimate advantage over him. There was a moment of hesitation after a clothesline to the back of the head because the leg went out. This all really followed a brief burst of Akiyama advantage that came with a German suplex. Because it was so key to the end of the match, I would have liked a more definitive touch of causality in why Kobashi's leg went back out after the German. It was all too indirect considering he wasn't selling it much a few moments before. It's not a dealbreaker, but given the level of detail in other points of the match, I thought it was important. The bigger issue is one of the meaning and value of moves. There were four hugely important moves/moments in the match. The last was Kobashi's leg going out towards the end, which I just discussed. Before that it was the Headlock Suplex that ended the leg work control section and the low dropkick that started it. And then there was the first move, the powerbomb on the floor. It just didn't feel earned at all. I love that they almost never hit a move the first time out in this style, that they have to work and hammer down on someone, that there is that sense of struggle. There was none of that with that early powerbomb. It was six or seven minutes in after the feeling out process and following a reverse whip into the guardrail and chop over it by Kobashi onto Akiyama. It was so important for the rest of the match but it also felt completely unearned. That sort of thing just contributes to the general sense of an unbalancing. At this stage of the style's development, how much was a half-nelson suplex worth? It looked nasty. It landed Akiyama on his hurt neck. Kobashi generally had to fight for it. It was just ultimately another move in the match. As a viewer, there's a symbolic disconnect to the damage that a move does relative to the effort put in to hitting it. It's a duel edged sword to some degree. They impart meaning on mostly everything in the struggle to hit the move and the amount of attempts, and the cost if they fail to hit it (like how much not hitting that Northern Lights cost Akiyama), but it was the move which had no struggle at all (the Powerbomb) that mattered and later on, for instance, when Kobashi hits a powerbomb in the ring, after working a bit more for it (I think with a chop, at least), Akiyama just turns it right into a tricky pin attempt reversal, not out of the ATTEMPT of the move, but after Kobashi hits it. There's no sense of consistent build within the match in that respect. It gets worse in the finishing stretch with exploder after exploder. I get why a guillotine has meaning in the year 2000 but I sort of hate so tight and visually unappealing and un-pro-wrestling-y a move finishing things after four exploders. But then, really, how much does an exploder matter, no matter how hard Akiyama fought to hit his first one and how hard Kobashi fought to not end up in one? After all, the first time that Akiyama DID hit it, very late in the match, Kobashi just popped up to hit a clothesline anyway. Am I glad I saw this? To a degree, sure. I'm not sure 26 minutes of glad though. The neck torquing was awesome. I liked Akiyama's desperation leg-targeting. There were individual elements I liked a lot. In a vacuum, the currency of the moves in the match, the effort put into them relative to the effect that they had, the impact of them in the first act relative to the third (or fourth in this case, since the match had four), was just so imbalanced. I'd put this between three and three and a half Noahs. notes (I don't suggest looking at this)

I wanted to vote for Mighty Atlas but I thought you'd mock me too much if I did.

Has he had an encounter with Maximo recently then?

A quick (overly personal, I admit) point on "giving too much:" The only Bockwinkel matches I am relatively down upon are the ones vs Verne right around 1980 where I think he gives Verne almost the entirety of the match, stooging and bumping around the ring with a sort of verve and exuberance that you wouldn't really expect out of him. To a lesser extent, he works this way against Hogan and JYD. It's one reason why (Pete and) I thought the Atlas match that recently surfaced was so remarkable, because he makes Atlas look like a mat whiz instead of working like this which he could have easily done. It's much more of a traditional world title match. When it comes to comparative categorization of matches, I know Loss is a proponent of using time as the primary key field. Every match in January, 1990 around the world, etc. I am much more interested about situations. Broadly that could be narrative based: Big vs Little. Old vs Young. Strong vs Sneaky. But it could also be more purpose-driven. Return matches. Retirement matches. Matches to lead to a turn. Matches to establish a young lion as a star. And yes, matches vs the Boss, like Hansen vs Colon, for instance.

I'm not sure how frequently I'll do this or how far I'll get but I am going to watch some Noah. I have seen >5 Noah matches and could not tell you what they were if you asked. Except for Marifuji vs Taue. I'm pretty sure that was Noah. Young GOTNW has sent me a list of things he thinks I'd like. I'll do a write up, include my real time notes in a spoiler tag (probably best not to read those), and then conclude with a 1-5 Noahs ranking based on the following criteria solely: "How glad am I that I saw this match?" Don't look at them like star ratings. They're not. Let's begin. Kenta Kobashi vs Masao Inoue - 3/1/2009 This felt like Jerry Lawler returning to the Mid-South Coliseum in December, 1980, if he was ten years older and up against Carl Fergie instead of Dream Machine. That's a bit of a stretch. Maybe it was more like if 1980 Jose Lothario was up against 1980 Rip Rogers? We learn by building off of our pre-existing knowledge and that's where my mind went first. This was the returning babyface king, tough as nails, absolutely deadly, perhaps a step slower but as tough as ever against a stooging heel well over his head. It was pure Memphis to begin, with Inoue, who has a sort of jovial, friendly look to him, dodging an early chop. That's how the match began, with a lock up and the duck of a Kobashi chop. It was all heightened reality. The chop was a home run swing. The duck was exaggerated. The reaction from the crowd and Inoue was if he dodged a bullet. Realizing the climb before him and the fact that the last thing he wanted in the entire world was to get hit by one of those chops, Inoue, no longer jovial but instead a man with his own doom upon his mind, went straight for the eyes. He utilized these long, extended (again over-exaggerated in the best way) rakes and followed with some World of Sport styled positioning of the ref so as to punch repeatedly in a headlock (the ref didn't play along). He tried some shoulder blocks to no avail (selling the difference between the two with comedic running in place before the second one). When that didn't work, he went back to the eyes. Kobashi, partially blinded, responded with another home run shot, this time a spinning back chop. Inoue ducked it and then powdered hitting the floor to stall. The fans responded exactly as they should, seeing full well the symbolic value of every swing. Kobashi was patient and stoic, sitting upon the ropes, opening them to goad Inoue back in (another gasp). They reset and locked back up, but only for a moment, as Inoue went back to the eyes. This led to some comedically ineffective clubbering, a futile kick, and a second attempt, which Kobashi, perfectly serious and unaffected, caught. He slammed the foot down temporarily immobilizing Inoue, and the entire world came to a halt as the chops began. Kobashi knew 100% the value of his every strike here, built up both over the years and within this match itself. His windup was huge. Inoue dropped like a brick and rolled out to delay the crowd's gratification for just another moment. The tide had shifted though and the genie was out of the bottle. Kobashi immediately pressed Inoue into the ropes upon his entrance back to the ring and the chops continued, slow, methodological, paced with big set ups and time given for their effect to settle in. Standing, falling, to the throat, with a suplex and a few pins interspersed. At one point, Kobashi, having Inoue in the corner after a failed attempt from the latter to fight out, even hopped from foot to foot (small motions, but measured ones) in order to set up a chop. Inoue collapsed, sold and begged off but I would have liked to see a bit more active flailing. At times, it seemed like he almost went catatonic from the impact. It was effective and perhaps didn't take attention away from Kobashi, but I would have liked to see something a bit more broad and visual from him to get across the severity of the blows. In general though, it was a hugely effective opening that allowed for the establishment of symbolic meaning, anticipation and then satisfying payoff. The rest of the match was centered around Inoue doing anything in his power to get an advantage but being completely unable to capitalize. His lone advantage was his youth, shown first and foremost in his ability to reverse Kobashi's whips. One of these, into the guardrail, gave him his best chance. He was able to keep control for a minute after that by working over the back, but abandoned it after Kobashi decided to do some push ups out of a Boston Crab (Inoue's stooging facial reaction to that was great, it's worth noting). I'm guessing his finisher was some sort of contrived 2009 head drop out of a torture rack. He went for it twice only to have it fail and cost him each time. On the second, Kobashi reversed and went for the half-nelson suplex. Inoue gasped and escaped but at the cost that he was finally opened up and trapped in the corner for the rapid-fire chops. This felt like an almost religious experience for the crowd, who clapped along. The most striking image of the whole match to me was a middle-aged (maybe even older) man in a suit with glasses and a giddy look in his face as he clapped to the oscillating speed of the chops. Kobashi followed this by hitting the half-nelson suplex. Inoue took it like a champ but did make it back to his feet for one last eyerake (which I was okay with because he'd mostly taken pain but not punishment in the back so far), before eating a huge Kobashi clothesline for the win. Inoue played his role well, looking for any opportunity, treating Kobashi with the proper fear and respect. The one moment in the match where he dared to stand up and even ask for those chops, he could only take two (to huge effect; no no-selling here) before begging off in the corner (that didn't work). He was more comedic than credible but was persistent and frenetic enough to bring movement to the match and he made sure to react for the back row to every situation he found himself in. I appreciated how he let Kobashi embrace him after the match but continued to sell and almost melted out of the ring after a few seconds, letting Kobashi seem magnanimous while not making it about him at all. Kobashi's restraint was admirable and it more than paid off. He garnered a lot of value from almost every chop and the end result felt, as I indicated, almost like a religious experience for the crowd. I enjoyed this a lot. I loved the thought put into the opening of the match, and thought most of what Inoue did throughout the match as he tried to deal with the monolith that was Kobashi made sense and had meaning. They went home exactly when it should have. It had to be, more or less, what people wanted out of a feel-good Kobashi return match. Four and a half Noahs (not a star rating). Notes (I don't suggest reading these):

Truly the unsophisticated words of an undereducated, working class lout, lacking some sort of visceral thrill in his daily life and trying to make up for it though a voyeuristic vicariousness when it comes to men backhand chopping each other at high speed and frequency. Probably works in a coal mine and can only make analogies based on cheese appetizers. This is exactly why the Victorians insisted all the museums be free of charge.

Someone give me a list of matches that I can find online and I will watch them.

It's a little funny in this specific situation because if there was anything wrong with the match, it was the layout. The actual performances, commitment to character, intensity... all of the things that feel like "performance elements" separated from practice-able ones or agent-lay-out or whatever, is what was we have pretty direct evidence of being strong.

Again, I think it's worthwhile then to think about the opportunities provided to cerebral wrestlers relative to ones more-heart focused, the drawbacks. What does it mean to "wrestle smart" if you're a wrestler like Kobashi? What does it mean if you're Andre? What does it mean if you're Kamala? What does it mean if you're Primo Colon in 2016? Or Mike Jackson in 1984? Working smart, to me, is generally about economy. It's about getting the most narrative and emotional value out of every single movement in the ring, every move, every bump, every bit of selling, every iota of crowd interaction, every two-count or cut off or bit of manager interference or rope break or reversal. It's about value, and then adding up all of that value to create a total effect (and likely over time with all of the context in the world mattering). You can do that in a match like AJ Styles vs John Cena, which was full of spots and kick-outs. You can do it a UWF Fujiwara match. You can do it a southern tag or a lucha trios spotfest or in a thumbtack death match. It's just getting the most out of everything you're doing and conversely, doing the things that you'll get the most out of. I'll admit that it may be easier or harder depending on the circumstance, however. Moreover, it doesn't need to be about intent, but instead what worked within a match (or over a series a matches or a career) or didn't. We can extrapolate backwards through our own lenses (and that's where the bias comes in, since we tend to decide what works and what doesn't and how to judge efficiency. But most of us are consistent between wrestlers at least).

Sure. I don't disagree that we should think about why someone is acting as they're acting. That said, just because it's potentially the right thing for him to be doing, doesn't mean it works to make good matches. Sometimes it hurts a match. That goes back to styles and crowds to some degree. I actually don't think RVD should have worked much differently than he did work. It got him over. It made the fans happy. It doesn't mean that I think his matches are good. In the Benoit vs RVD matches, for instance, Benoit is the one who works the matches wrong, focusing too much on limbwork against a guy who won't sell it properly and who the crowd doesn't really want to see sell it properly. I give Kobashi a lot of credit for getting over with his fighting spirit to the extent that he does. At times, I think it's amazingly effective and at times I think it goes too far and it takes me out of the match. Does it take the crowd out of the match? No. That's one of the biggest theoretically splits in wrestling analysis, isn't it? If it works for the crowd, is it objectively good or are there higher values, be they based on narratives or workrate or whatever?

We control for it, like any other bias. I think, as far as biases go, it's not at all a major one in the grand scheme of things. I'd be open to other sorts of arguments, like, for instance, that it's easier for someone to portray an intellectual heel, in-ring, than a high flying heel or a monster heel or a stooging one. I think that's an interesting discussion. I don't think "People can't distinguish between a wrestler and his character" is a very interesting discussion. It's how a wrestler plays his character that matters. There are different challenges to playing different characters and it's those challenges we should be looking at (even comparatively). I'm much more of an input guy than an output guy, but I do think it's possible that certain characters make for more consistently good matches. (And that's another interesting discussion). I think there are bunch of interesting discussions to have, just not the "People mistake Kamala for being a sloppy worker because he plays an out of control savage!" one.

I think a) It's a point that's been raised before, so if people weren't aware of their biases on this issue, then they've had plenty of notice to stop and look at it, and b ) we're far enough along in the analysis of character work to really look at the character being played. That's part of the entire point of it. We've spent years delving into this stuff. I think we're able to be aware of the difference between the wrestler and the character. We all have preferences, but everyone, from Parv to Chad to you to I to Sam to everyone here, often goes out of their ways to acknowledge preferences and try to control for them in looking at matches. It's what we do. To say we're not aware of that, almost half a year after the GWE project ended, years after it began, and after people have reviewed hundreds upon hundreds of matches here is pretty absurd to me.

I can understand why that might be a pitfall somewhere else, but I don't think that's even remotely an issue here. Not even a 1% chance with the people we have on this board and the depth they look at matches. Not even a ghost of a chance. It's the equivalent of saying that people think that Mike Shaw was a pretty dumb and wasteful worker because he portrayed Norman the Lunatic. Just ridiculous.

Part of my personal frustration with mid-late 90s AJPW is just how good and smart they are, with an attention to detail to very small things that can have huge emotional impacts within a match and over matches. There are so many specific elements that are completely down my alley and better and more layered than any other attempt at them I've come across. Then, they just go on too far with too much and lose me and it's much worse than if the match was terrible to begin with. It's, in part, why I gravitate towards Taue, because his physical limitations meant that he could only go so far and he was still awash in the general style and everything else. It doesn't mean his input is better necessarily but that I am more comfortable with his output. It's not a very good argument for him as a better wrestler (he probably wasn't), but it's the argument for him having matches that I'm happier watching. I also recognize my lack of breadth of watching, so I'm not a particularly loud voice on this topic. I should check out mid-2000s Kobashi at some point. Someone suggest me a few specific matches I'd probably be high on? I've said this before but Nick Bockwinkel's character was "smart guy", "wily vet", "sneaky champ", when THAT's your character then of course a lot of stuff you do is going to "smart". But Kobashi didn't have that character. Ric didn't either, but I don't think there are four faces of Bock like there are four faces of Flair ... from a certain perspective Bock is more one dimensional in his actual character work than Flair is. I think that's utter nonsense. Not even worth replying to. As for the other point, I just made a distinction of Taue as a worker vs Taue matches. Inputs vs outputs. Which goes against your last complaint completely.

Part of my personal frustration with mid-late 90s AJPW is just how good and smart they are, with an attention to detail to very small things that can have huge emotional impacts within a match and over matches. There are so many specific elements that are completely down my alley and better and more layered than any other attempt at them I've come across. Then, they just go on too far with too much and lose me and it's much worse than if the match was terrible to begin with. It's, in part, why I gravitate towards Taue, because his physical limitations meant that he could only go so far and he was still awash in the general style and everything else. It doesn't mean his input is better necessarily but that I am more comfortable with his output. It's not a very good argument for him as a better wrestler (he probably wasn't), but it's the argument for him having matches that I'm happier watching. I also recognize my lack of breadth of watching, so I'm not a particularly loud voice on this topic. I should check out mid-2000s Kobashi at some point. Someone suggest me a few specific matches I'd probably be high on?

Yeah totally. I reserve the right to up or downgrade any ratings on 2nd, 3rd, 4th viewing. I've also adjusted ratings before now, talked up or talked down after discussing them over with someone else whose takes I really respect. Sometimes people can see stuff you can't. And for me that's one of the key reasons to read or listen to reviews period. If you look at my initial post, I was mainly saying: "Okay, that's a big star rating. I'd be curious to see you watch some more Evolve and see if you still feel that way." That's all. I could have framed the tone better. As for understanding. I think we're looking for as much of the truth of the match as we can figure out. It could be our truth of how we see it. I think understanding is a part of that. Our understanding of a match shapes our analysis and ultimately our contextual placement.

To some degree it's more of an temporal issue in this specific case. I need Loss to come in here and explain how he likes to understand what's happening in a certain year around the world and defend the value of that.

This is an interesting stance to me, I don't disagree with you idea. That said I wonder who you would see that information effecting a rating negatively unless you are implying that if Parv understood the background more he might give it a higher rating? That's a fair question. Ok, the answer, as best as I can give it is this: It's one thing to give something a 5* rating. It's another to start to promote or drive people towards it or to utilize that rating in a social context. And then, really, what's the purpose of a star rating in the first place? Is it the end point of analysis or the starting point? Is it only worthwhile for listmaking purposes? To fill out an excel sheet? If I come across a match that I rate so highly, I want to get all the way around it and understand it because it's a very rare beast. I want to really break it down and figure out what makes it tick. I want to be sure of my own rating. I want to hear others' opinions to see if they agree or disagree, if they might see something I'm missing. Moreover, just by the way I look at wrestling, I do tend to connect dots, and I want to make sure those dots are accurately connected. I want to check and double check my work. In this case, while Parv dips his toe into 00s wrestling, it's usually with a level of disdain. I think he was surprised that he found this match, not only that it wasn't talked up much, but that it actually existed on this card, in the weeds of the sort of cosplay pretend indy wrestling of the modern day (even in front of a crowd that he probably didn't think deserved or appreciated what they saw correctly). That dissonance was striking to him, and whenever I encounter that level of dissonance I want to dive deeper and look for corroboration. The more information I can bring to the table, the better. I've seen my share of Hero in 2015 (if not 2016). Parv hasn't. I think the ultimate goal of analyzing wrestling is understanding it, not necessarily ranking it.

I voted Charlotte, but if Charlotte was a face right now and Sasha a heel, I probably would have voted Sasha.

I've watched a lot of wrestling. That said, I'd be hesitant to be introduced to a new style (and this is a new style for him) and immediately give a match on the first show I see five stars on a first watch. There are plenty of places that I might be missing some element because of lack of context or that I might have connected dots that I shouldn't have, for instance. I know my own limitations. I'm not saying Parv's limitations are the same as mine, but I find it useful to get a better 360 view of things.