Matt D

No, that's an interesting thought and one that I never really considered. This match didn't have a face/heel structure, I don't think, or if it did, then I didn't pick up on it well enough. The "heat" segment was with Misawa taking the beating, but the Americans were the ones doing the clapping and also, I think, receiving the most chants, so.. Is it an honor thing? A good morality thing? That you wait as long as you can for your opponent to fight back before you simply can't take it anymore? If that's the case then there should be some sort of cost to giving in and interfering. I'm not sure what that would be, whether it's loss of face or karma or an admission of shame or whatever. I'm not even sure how that would pay off. Does it generally? In southern tags, when you get pissed off enough to interfere anyway, the consequence is immediate and tangible. The ref chastises you and the heels get a chance to illegally double team. Instant karma. Here is it more of a spiritual thing over time?

No he wouldn't. Honky wouldn't struggle at all. He was real good at not struggling.

Alright, you've watched a lot of stuff from Dibiase and from Boss Man. Can we have some comparing, contrasting?

I actually like 1992 Ottman a lot. From an execution standpoint is there anything HHH has ever done better than his big splash.

Sorry, I wasn't implying that you said that. Just that the way he put it there was reasonable enough that in that instance that I wouldn't throw him under the bus for it but I might if he had put it differently.

The only person who came to mind for too many TV matches with little or no quality was Kane. Not saying Kane doesn't have decent TV matches. Saying the ratio isn't good. All the weird creepy Kane fans can let this go or put it in the Kane thread. It is totally unfair that you can get away with saying things like "weird creepy Kane fans" when everyone thinks I'm breathing fire when I am anything less than a perfect gentleman. "Oh, that Will, so funny." "Jeez, why is Loss getting so bent out of shape?" The difference is that he said "Not saying Kane doesn't have decent TV matches. Saying the ratio isn't good." That's a much more measured, reasonable statement. And it's true too.

Well, Now we have to call you on that, you know. I think everyone here could post as one to do so.

I had in my notes how much I liked Hansen's attempt to get out of holds early on, so I absolutely agree with that. I did think I was missing a lot of the context, so thanks for pointing it out. I remember seeing a Tenta tag in UWFi where I was impressed by how many things they accomplished coming out of the match. Here I didn't see it as clearly but some of that stuff, even without context,is crystal clear. NL, I think we're going to have to disagree. Obviously it's stylistic, but why should we care about the guys reaching for a tag when they're just going to come in and break the hold up a moment later. I don't get hose these things jive.

I think this was Chad's pick. It is not hard to find, but keep in mind you're looking for the 5/18/94 match. I'll have more opinions later but I do want to point out a few things. We're good for the next few weeks but people should fill in their first pick if they haven't already. When I think we're tapped, or if we're getting closer to the end of what we have, I'll ask for a second round of them. I've seen very little All Japan from this era. I know it is sort of the high watermark of workrate style wrestling, the whole King's Road thing, but this was all completely new to me I'm not sure I've ever seen a Kikuchi match and I've seen very little Ace in Japan, and probably less Misawa/Kobashi than anyone on the board. That said, I thought the no-selling was at least relatively contained and logical. There was reason behind it and escalation for the most part. Kikuchi spent almost a third of the match on the apron even though he had his fighting spirit moment earlier in the match. They would build to a move hitting/have impact. Certainly the crowd was into what they're doing. It's pretty obvious to see how this style has gotten warped over the years though. Even back in 94 they were walking a very fine line and I think at certain points they went over it. For the most part, I was satisfied though, at least in this small dose. I'm not sure this is the style for me. It's so weird to me to see Williams/Hansen clapping on the outside. The crowd responded but it was still sort of surreal to see I could have used a bit more traditional tag work. The main story, I suppose, was that William and Hansen were able to overpower their opponents at almost all points, but the Japanese were able mostly get by through toughness and slightly more finesse in their teamwork. There was a lengthy enough heat segment on Misawa, with Hansen stating on back work but then moving away quickly. I did like how they built up the pile-driver through the match though. When they finally hit the spike pile-driver there's a real sense of escalation. The bump Kikuchi took over the corner was huge. What bugged me the most about the match was all of the interference whenever a hold was on. There was a moment where Williams had Misawa in seated chinlock and they show Kikuchi and Kobashi desperately reaching for the tag, dramatic. A moment later, when they don't get it Kobashi just comes in and stomps. i feel like that's how 3/4th of all the holds in the match end and it adds to the craziness of the six man, but I think it really undermines the tag structure, especially when they go back to things like desperately reaching for a tag. It reeks of doing stuff and not having any idea of why they're doing it. They also flip the camera angle at the very end so the Americans' corner is in the bottom right when it was in the top left the whole match. It was pretty weird. I liked the finishing segment, especially Williams' last second save from the floor. I didn't think the last Lariat looked great but they did tease it a lot during the match and I'll take concept over execution any day. I'm glad I saw this but I'm in no rush to see a bunch more of this style right now.

There are things more effective than the element of surprise. It's a super match and I think it's more of a draw than either singles match up.

Does anyone contest this is the match of the night?

Piper's awesome on commentary here. When Warrior is calling for the power of the gods.

I think he had good matches in 93. Not a ton but he had them. Stuff with Bret, the Tag with Razor vs Bret+Perfect. Some TV stuff was pretty good (Tito, Owen). It doesn't help that he spent a lot of the back half of the year wrestling Borga.

Shoot-wise, I'd lean towards the Kevin Sullivan ones. There's some interesting stuff there. In general the Rene Goulet one is interesting because it's about being a road agent, but it's not as interesting as one might hope.

My favorite question right now is "What if Vince became a wrestler in the 70s?"

Big Boss Man vs. Jake Roberts, Tokyo 4/13/90 Hadn't seen this before. I really liked the opening stuff. Both guys were doing great little things to keep the advantage: Boss Man's gut punch, Jake's rushing Arm Hanger while Boss Man was jawing with the crowd. I like how he reacted to the early DDT attempt by going to town on Jake's hair, pissed off, and also the bump he took out of the ropes. I actually thought it was a fun character based way to do that sort of an opening segment without making it just chain wrestling or shtick. It ends on a big move and then Boss Man takes over with some really intense back work, ref and fan interaction, and a lot of gritty offense in general. Little things like how he'd grind the knee into the back after the backbreaker while whipping jake about like a ragdoll. Likewise with the bearhug. It's one of the only times I've ever seen a bearhug that was used mainly to damage the opponent and not wear him down or go for a submission. I'm not sure the chinlock was the right thing to do for this match, but it was relatively brief and both guys really worked it. I think it was mainly for calling spots anyway as Bossman came right back with the beautiful running sledge to the back, the slam, and then right into the huge transition bump. I like how for the first ten minutes of the match Jake's two big moves were ambush yanks upon the arm and how the second one sort of set up the short arm clothesline. It makes sense he didn't go right for the DDT after that like usual since it's basically the entirety of the offense he hit in the match. Pretty fun back and forth finishing sequence for the match. I would have liked to see the back work pay off a bit more, maybe as a final transition tease instead of the reversal on the knee lift. I think your initial feelings were more accurate though. This was very good. I also thought it was full of a lot of character work between Jake doing sneak attacks and slithering around the ring in his selling post-bearhug and Boss Man basically being Boss Man, even if there was no program.

Very fun mini feud.

I can't get enough of the kid whose dad is filming all of the 93 MSG fancams. He's the most stereotypical New York Italian kid ever.

The thing is that neither of those two claims seemed wildly controversial to anyone but you.

I honestly wouldn't mind reading more about Butch Reed.

Losing Lawler and Heenan in quick succession was a hit.

Sting is more of a personal favorite. Luger is better. Early on definitely. Even in 93 I like Luger a lot though.

JvK, while I'm glad to go digging, if you were to represent me with the short list of Flair matches you wanted me to compare/contrast once again, I intend to do that this month and it'd make things easier.

How resented was Bock for how he got the title in the early 80s?

I love Pro Wrestling USA Robinson where he's backstage as Kamala's handler. It's the most random thing.