Matt D

My biggest argument against Misawa is one of excess, and it's tempered because it's style driven and audience driven and a necessity that was hoisted upon him but that was also of his making. I'm not at all claiming Bret is superior, but I'm curious if anyone can anyone point out a Bret Hart match that they'd use that particular word for?

Week 13. So DR Ackerman's on. WingedEagle's back. Tim Evans is back. Sir edgar is out for this week. The mighty shodate is back. rah Tim Evans WingedEagle Jmare007 HeadCheese dawho5 jetlag joeg oldbirds Richeyedwards shodate Nintendo Logic Matt D DR Ackerman laz laz, you're the odd man out this week. Someone might want to double up and if not, I'm happy to do so. Mr. Ackerman, I'll have something for you ASAP. Everyone else, remember, if you can't manage something this week, let us know ASAP. If you're just going to be a bit slow, make sure to give your partner something even if you can't watch a match in time.

There's PWO Welcome Pack level stuff like Savage vs Garvin in the cage or the Archie Gouldie promo about his son or even Andre vs Hansen. Absolutely. But there's also the ability to do this: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=midnight+express+vs

The trick with these are to listen to them at 1.5x speed and only in curated situations. For the Bischoff one, the trick will be getting deep into the minutia.

Its been very easy to see these over the years so Im not as excited as I was for something rarer but I am excited for the increased wrestling literacy of younger people more easily getting to see these.

The word I'd use for Misawa's selling is meticulous, and I mean that in the best way.

I said it over on DVDVR but Joe/Bryan vs Owens/Sami is basically the last act of any Marvel movie where the hero faces his evil double.

Your first instinct is correct.

joeg gave me Spinks vs Onita which was very much my kind of match. Simple, pure, visceral; a pro wrestling mythology in two acts. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/41426-atsushi-onita-vs-leon-spinks-fmw-052492/ And as a bonus, dawho was kind enough to give me Fujinami vs Nishimura which felt like a self-aware modern match with very old trappings, centered around limbwork and a mentor-student vibe and executed well. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/21805-tatsumi-fujinami-vs-osamu-nishimura-muga-092506/ Thanks to you both. We'll reshuffle later on today (or maybe tomorrow morning). Anyone on/off this week?

This match was a pretty interesting mix of old and new. For the most part, everything in it could have happened twenty years earlier (maybe even thirty) with very little change. There were structural flourishes that I don't think would have happened that way though. The 2/3 falls stip made it feel like a 70s match but then I think it's very unlikely you would have seen that first fall (an almost immediate roll up out of a figure four attempt) happen before 1990. There was a certain self-awareness to it all which doesn't exist in the dueling limb battles of the 80s, for instance, and it both helps and hurts the match. I do think it makes it more unique. I liked the fact that nothing was overly tricked out, that they were using basic, straightforward holds and using them well to get across their story. There are a lot of smaller things to look at here. I'm a sucker for the short arm scissors and this match is the most short arm scissory match I've ever seen. Nishimura's is just so good. I love in his armwork segment how he'd use the cross arm breaker not as an end but as a means to get back into the short arm scissors. I really enjoyed the way they transitioned into Fujinami's legwork, as he went after the hand/arm in revenge just long enough to get the distance/control he needed to target the area he wanted to target. Both guys sold well. Fujinami whacking his own hand repeatedly to keep the feeling in it worked. Nishimura has this very stoic face which is a tool he can utilize in showing emotion (as it shifts it completely). I'm very iffy on the finish. There were things I liked. I liked Nishimura gutting it out and really calling out Fujinami for what he was doing with the attacks on the apron. He basically just put his leg there and made the whole world see what Fujinami was doing, basically asking him if it was worth it. It was a very cool moment. The turning over of the figure four as a finish didn't work for me though. Nishimura did get some leg shots in during the last third of the match but having never seen a submission on a reversed figure four in my life, I don't think it was entirely earned in context. I would have liked it more if he reversed the figure four and then used the break to put on some armlock for the finish. Overall, I think it's a unique match well worth watching.

Plus, we've all spoken so much with ourselves about this stuff that yeah, I mean, no offense to the OP who is also new, but if we have to compare Bryan's "Ability" to Misawa/Kobashi/Kawada or go on about the value of realism in pro-wrestling using Bryan and Volk Han as lenses... I guess I know which way I'm going to fall.

I think it leaned closer to incredible than terrible, myself. The punches looked 3/4th legit. I'm pretty sure that Spinks just swung and Onita was happy to lean into them for the effect. The blood came early but worked well. Spinks went up for suplexes. The biggest issues I had were 1.) that Spinks gave too much too soon on the two clotheslines. They were desperation and things that he, as a boxer, wouldn't be used to taking, but it felt like too much too soon. 2.) that Onita went a bit stupid on some of his suplexes/the cage DDT. Simple would have worked, and maybe 3.) the execution of the final submission that probably was supposed to be an octopus but wasn't. I thought the post match with Spinks picking Onita back up was excellent and that in general, Spinks got it for this match. But in truth, I have no idea, because this appealed to the stuff I value. Selling and comeback. Build and payoff. (and peachchaos, I don't think I've seen any of the 90 run. I know a lot is online but that's a gap year for my memphis watching, because it's sort of twice the work).

Is this a rhetorical question or would you like me to answer?

This is one I probably wouldn't have ended up watching if it wasn't suggested to me. I like Onita. Even more than Onita himself, I like the idea of Onita: classically trained, Memphis-honed, charismatic, over the top, unchained spectacle, a creator of moments and possibilities. Spinks is not heavily on my radar. Past a year of watching Tuesday Night Fights on USA as an 11 year old, Boxing's never been my thing. I get the idea of a limited outsider with a faded but still viable name value and a very specific skillset. This was pure, beautiful simplicity. Spinks punches Onita. Onita falls. Onita bleeds. Onita gets back up. Spinks punches him again. Onita falls. Onita barely makes the count. This repeats and repeats and repeats until the crowd, their hearts moved by Onita's selling and his resilience, start chanting his name. Then, in desperation, he dives across the ring for a clothesline instead of eating another punch. It doesn't work the first time, but it does the second. This lets him turn the tide. Spinks had waited for the ten count, had let Onita get back up. He's a boxer. Onita's a wrestler. That means that he picks up Spinks to control the moment and keep the momentum. He uses the cage for a DDT (probably too over the top), hits him with some suplexes that Spinks takes bravely, and finishes him with two attempts at a submission. It's basic, it's primal, it gets Onita over as warrior. It keeps Spinks' heat since he lost mainly because he fought a wrestling match like a boxer. Spinks gets a payoff. Onita beats a legit fighter. The crowd goes home happy. Everyone wins. Wrestling is the best.

I reviewed it longform on SC (and I imagine Phil/Eric will follow suit soon): http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2018/03/ancient-andre-from-archives-andre-giant.html I have no idea why this came out now. I'm just glad it did. This is one of the earliest Andre matches we've seen and it's potentially his first title win. Van Buyten is a guy we just have bits and pieces of at disparate points of his career. We have him in Germany against Lasartesse and Dave Taylor and Terry Rudge in the mid-late 80s. We have him in one of my favorite comedy performances of all time in a 6 man against Andre in 1973 IWE. This is a straight up title match with him absolutely shining. After about eight minutes of ceremony, this gets going. It's actually structured unlike many Andre matches I've seen, but in a way that I really love. Van Buyten, the more experienced technician (champion even), who has dozens of tools in his arsenal, has to figure out how to deal with the problem of Andre. The problem of Andre in 1968 is different than in 1978 or 1988 when he was thicker, slower, easier to keep grounded once you got him down. Here he was all arms and legs, with incredible strength and incredible reach. Just twisting an ankle or stepping over for some sort of legvine was near impossible, and if Van Buyten somehow managed it, Andre would be within reach of the ropes almost no matter where he was in the ring. This played out in practice. There's a 30+ second segment at the start of Van Buyten trying desperately to get a leglock of some sort on. He does everything from attacking at the leg to trying to ride it down with all of his body weight, to no avail as Andre shrugs him off in the end. The sheer struggle of it was tremendous though. Ultimately, Van Buyten's able to use his speed and skill and sheer aggression and confidence to hold his own during this first third. He'll leap right into Andre just to get a front facelock on, will dive head first into Andre's torso just to buy some distance to lock in another cravat. He knows his only chance at long term survival is to keep these holds on; if Andre gets his hands on him, it's over. So he hangs on even as Andre tries to shrug him off, leading, at one point, to Andre taking a fly mare (an appropriate naming, as opposed to a snap mare, believe it or not), but Andre's just too big and too lanky and any movement around the ring takes him towards the ropes. The culmination of this is a pair of 'ranas, outright, real, true ones. One unfortunate development in wrestling over the last fifty or so years is that we've come to take so many spots for granted. Things are done for the sake of doing them and without the purpose or struggle that something newly developed might have. Here, to hit that first rana, Van Buyten has to twist his body back and forth. Absolutely nothing in this match is taken for granted. Everything Van Buyten does is fought for. Part of that was the fact that he was trying to do it to Andre, yes, but so much of it was just about the fact that this was a match from Frace in 1968. Times were different and the struggle was visceral. The middle of the match is Andre getting his hands on Van Buyten. Yes, it's a bear hug. Yes, it's an Andre bear hug, but it's like none you've ever seen. There is struggle here to go along with the selling, and Van Buyten has to sell this. Andre's winning the match and it's up to Van Buyten to keep himself over by both showing how hard he's fighting and also showing Andre to be the threat that he is. In the end, though, he tries to hip top his way out of the bearhug, which is a crazy thought, and Andre hangs on, causing both men to tumble to the mat. The finishing stretch is all about Van Buyten's skill and desperation against Andre's inevitable strength. Towards the end, as Van Buyten tries to charge at him once more, Andre lifts him up for a first press-slam into a gut buster. Then, remarkably, Van Buyten tries it again. When you're watching a match from an alien time and an alien place, in an alien style, with one wrestler you're only passingly familiar with, there's always a danger of reading too much or too little into the text. Here, though, I feel fairly sure of myself. Van Buyten all but jumped into the second press slam-gutbuster, without the struggle of the first or most of the rest of the match. This surprised me in the moment, until it became relatively clear that it was part of a broader gambit. At the moment of contact (knee to stomach), he arched his body, grabbing hold to Andre and rolling him over. It was a moment of true sacrifice, a desperate gambit late in the match to get the advantage back, to lock on one pin attempt or hold that might win the day, to fight the tide of Andre's gargantuan presence. It failed. Andre was too big, too lanky, and no matter where he was, just too close to the ropes. After a clean break, Van Buyten, selling the side, came up firing, a last ditch attempt at survival, firing off nasty forearm blows. Andre shrugged them off and lifted him for a third press slam-gutbuster. One slam later and it was over. This was great and we're lucky to have it. It's maddening to think what else might be locked up in a warehouse in France, but exciting as well. It's a testament to both men that they could have a match like this so early into Andre's run and it's also a testament to them that their interaction five years later in Japan was so wildly different and so differently entertaining. Hopefully more of these might slip out in the months to come.

It's about the illusion of real, about minimizing pain and actual violence and maximizing emotional and narrative effect, about getting as much value as possible for the smallest personal cost, while creating a suspension of disbelief in the audience and convincing people to invest their money, time, and hearts.

I don't have the language skills to do much with this, but someone (jetlag?) should look at what's available for ina.fr on the premium section and whether or not it's more readily out there. I realize this is sort of a "low hanging fruit" thing relatively but who knows, right? It looks like there are at least 3-4 large chunks (40 mins) from the 60s. http://www.ina.fr/premium/sport/autres-sports

Purgatory is being medically cleared but having to wrestle Lance Storm and only Lance Storm forever.

Reading back through that thread was interesting. I was hell bent on putting Bryan 30 or higher and he almost made my top 20.