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KB8

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Everything posted by KB8

  1. KB8
    Cool opening to what was certainly a ballsy concept, even if financially it never really hit. Everyone rolling into the arena in the back of a garbage truck was certainly interesting.
  2. KB8
    They were probably reaching the point of diminishing returns with this match-up and that was before they ran it again two days later. Still, this was sort of amusing for Hogan horseshittin' it up like a weasel. I didn't know they had Patrick work this whole PPV so that's...a new thing I now know.
  3. KB8
    I thought this was alright. Some of the ladder spots looked pretty nasty, like Eddie being flapjacked knees-first on the ladder (even though that was probably a bit flubbed), and overall they worked a decent wrestling match built around a small handful of big moments. Eddie has an awesome run after the heel turn and we're not quite there yet, but I've always liked this well enough as a look at him starting to find his feet a bit more as a pure babyface. You could tell he never really put it together as a character until the turn, because by October he was a sneering asshole with charisma out the wazoo whereas here he still seemed a bit reserved. Bischoff must've spent a good three minutes trying to put Waltman over as a legit karate practitioner - while also putting over his own karate prowess, because if HE wasn't a master of the discipline then how could he possibly know for sure that Waltman was? - only to later tell us Waltman missed a stamp to the solar plexus despite clearly stomping the ladder into Eddie. The way him and DiBiase played up Scott Hall giving him ladder match pointers was cool, though.
  4. KB8
    Decent last few minutes and a cool moment for the title change. Nash's bump for the German suplex was pretty huge and sort of surprising. Scott and Rick looked kinda rough at points and, based on what we get, I agree that Hall looked the best of the bunch.
  5. KB8
    Not quite as hot as the Nitro angle, though much the same as that and Page hitting Diamond Cutters before leaving through the crowd will always get a response. Buff's been a fun shithead since joining the nWo and feels like one of the only B-teamers who adds something to proceedings beyond a warm beyond on which to throw an nWo shirt.
  6. KB8
    This was the only match from Elimination Chamber that I was bothered about so naturally it only lasted a couple minutes and was mostly about the post-match (which was pretty great as an angle, tbf. Becky sure laid it in with those crutch shots). I'm glad they decided to give them some time for a rematch because it was mighty fun. You knew there was going to be some Riott Squad interference in this, but I thought they did it in a way that made Ronda look like a killer who most folk can only beat with shenanigans while keeping it below the point where Ruby looked TOTALLY out of her depth. The interference itself was pretty inventive as well, especially when Morgan and Logan just yanked Ruby out the ring to prevent the armbar, which then led to Ronda hitting that wild cross body where she was all elbows and knees at awkward angles. Some of Rousey's execution is still raw enough that a couple strikes will whiff completely, but on the flipside of that everything else has the recklessness of a legit fighter trying to find her feet pulling off all these pro wrestling moves. Plus her bumping always looks rubbery and she'll often launch herself face-first into things like a nutjob. I liked how she sold the ribs here as well. Riott never went after them for any real length of time, but she threw some knees and bailed herself out with a spear, so Rousey sold it as an injury that hampered her in the first half of the match before it ceased to be a problem. Basically it was a nice example of middle gear selling lots of people don't bother with. Some of my favourite parts of Ronda's matches now are when she'll throw out an awesome bit of offence we haven't seen before and this time it was when she reversed the dragonrana by launching Ruby into the turnbuckle. Her throws at the start also looked great and the armbar setup as she scaled Ruby's body was badass. I dug this.
  7. KB8
    This was like the best possible version of a rounds-system RINGS fight between an old disgruntled ex-sumo wrestler and a younger, fatter ex-sumo wrestler. I mean I've watched a stupid amount of matches comprised of five three minute rounds the last few years. Some from RINGS, some from UWFi, some of them shoots, some of them not, but none of them this much fun. Tenryu looked every bit as great in 1994 as he did in 1993 and some of his selling was absolutely phenomenal. He sells Kitao's first flurry of Vader-ish soup bones likes he's been concussed, rolls out the ring grimacing after a leg kick, eats shots like he very much did not expect to be eating shots; he's one of the best sellers ever and always brings an awesome, subtle hint of realism to things. Of course he also wallops the dogshit out of Kitao. At one point he had him in the mount throwing forearms and punches, rasping his displeasure at Kitao having the audacity to cover up, so he just started choking him with the collar of Kitao's own gi. I liked how they started incorporating more of the pro-style elements round to round as well. In round one the closest thing to your pro wrestling was a Tenryu chop. In the second round he thumped Kitao with an absolute bastard of a lariat, a koppo kick that connected with both heels straight to the cranium, and Kitao hit a huge uranage. By the third round you had Tenryu trying to powerbomb him and Kitao hitting a fucking Michinoku Driver! Kitao's ax kick at the end about had me on the floor and Tenryu selling it like it shattered his clavicle is why he is the very greatest of them all. If Kitao has a match that's better I'll be surprised because this was just absurdly fun.
  8. KB8
    Well, start as you mean to go on, I guess. This was the main event of the WAR debut show and if you had any questions as to how things would be done in this particular Tenryu fed then they were answered pretty quickly. What a spectacular festival of violence this was. It almost felt like the best possible version of your classic WAR formula threaded through a dramatic double heat segment AWA tag. It had the extended beatdowns and the hope spots and cut-offs. It had the hot tags and even hotter finish. Only here the extended beatdowns were attempted homicides and the hope spots and cut-offs a hundred times more vicious. Here the hot tags led to someone's orbital bone getting demolished and the even hotter finish had someone getting dropped on their neck. The match starts with Tenryu and Kabuki pairing off, a couple guys who've worked together for years settling into this new home they've come to share. So Tenryu just chops him dead in the trachea inside twelve seconds. Just a totally inordinate and unnecessary response to what had been a simple shoulderblock. Kabuki is left rolling around clawing at his throat and I half expected the ref' to give him an emergency tracheotomy. And basically we're off to the races from that moment on. Orihara was tremendous in this and it felt like a true star-making performance. He gets absolutely smashed to bits. Him and Kitahara is a match-up that fucking ruled in SWS because Kitahara would just beat the brakes off him, but nothing like this. At one point Orihara did a kip-up and backflipped out of a top wrist lock and Kitahara obviously hated it because he made his life a total misery thereafter. There was one part where it looked like he was going to hit a piledriver, but then he muscled him up a bit further and hit a fucking Ganso Bomb! Kabuki never could backflip very well so he made the kid's life a misery too. I don't think I've ever seen Kabuki work stiffer than this. Everything he did was the most potatoey version of it possible, from his neckbreaker to his uppercuts under the chin, then he'd tag in Kitahara and Orihara would be kicked full force in the ear and neck. And what really made it was the way Orihara kept trying to fight back. He'd always try to throw punches or struggle to create some distance, although it usually only ended with him getting walloped even harder. It made everything feel uncooperative, like he did not want to be set upon like this and that he wasn't just there to take a beating and tag out, which at times almost made it an uneasy watch. The first hot tag was pretty much perfect as he fought back by kicking lumps out of Kitahara in return, then Tenryu came in taking heads off and from there everything went up another few notches. The back half of this had something wild or awesome or outright barbaric - sometimes all three at once - happening every few seconds. Orihara's second heat segment sees him get the shit kicked out of him even worse than before but he fights back by crushing Kabuki with two dives. Tenryu breaks a chair over Kabuki's back so later Kabuki superkicks him in the throat. The partner saves are just stupid brutal even for WAR as Kitahara ends up with his eyebrow split in half. All of the Tenryu/Kitahara sections towards the end were incredible and Tenryu trying to punt his spleen through the uprights was fucking unbelievable. It honest to god might've been the most hellish beating he's ever delivered to someone. I mean think of the SCOPE of that! Just amazing front to back. The WAR Main Event Tag is an acquired taste, but this was a classic of the genre and might be the best WAR match of them all.
  9. KB8
    How in the name of Christ did Kandori ever get a shitty rep as a worker? This was fucking wild. It's largely strikers (Hotta/Maekawa) v grapplers (Kandori/Endo), but the wrinkle is that Endo can't really hang and so it feels like Kandori often has to go it alone. It didn't help that Endo charged Hotta before the bell and I guess got punched or stabbed in the guts for her trouble, so she started the match even more handicapped than usual. Hotta and Maekawa were an unbelievable pair of thugs in this. About six seconds in Hotta punts Endo's teeth through the back of her head and from that point forward she and Maekawa throw a staggering amount of vicious kicks. Some of these were truly vile and they came in multiple shapes and sizes. Maekawa would fold Endo in half with a camel clutch while Hotta would blast her in the chest, then they'd switch over and try to outdo each other. Hotta was swinging for the fences like she always did, but her partner on the night had her beat. Maekawa was always stiff as a bastard, like Murakami only with kicks and even more reckless into the bargain. She was hitting ax kicks to the forehead and neck, pump kicks to the face, roundhouses, Wanderlei punts, penalty kicks, the whole repertoire of gratuitous violence. Kandori as walking tall badass was amazing, though. The first time she gets in there's a palpable sense of shit getting real and those moments where she was launching folk with judo throws and snapping into submissions were awesome. There were parts where Endo was lying half dead somewhere so she'd have to weather the storm by herself, taking one opponent down only to be kicked ridiculously hard in the face by the other, which more than once led to her being kicked ridiculously hard in the face by both of them. She's usually a great seller of strikes anyway, maybe my favourite in all of joshi, and there was one shot from Maekawa that was near Fujiwara level. All of the exchanges with Hotta ruled as well. You can sort of understand how it isn't really mentioned as a classic feud in the joshi pantheon, but every time they match up it's nuclear. The slow circling, the mugging, the shit-talking, Hotta's strikes v Kandori's wrestling, those highlights like Kandori spearing her out her boots and raining down elbows. How has this gone so far under the radar? Finish is awesome as well. Endo's been taken out for the umpteenth time and Kandori is trying to finish Maekawa, but Hotta won't give her a second's peace and is constantly breaking up submission attempts. Kandori clearly tells her to fuck off out the ring, and as she goes to leave Kandori jumps her and chokes her out. Kandori finally has Maekawa one on one and now she has until Hotta regains consciousness to put her away. The armbar at the end is grotesque and Endo managing to hold off the reawakening Hotta was a great little slice of revenge. I thought this was incredible and one of the best joshi matches of the decade.
  10. KB8
    This is one of the only big ECW angles of the year I'd already seen, and it's one of my absolute favourites the company ever did. First time I saw it was on Will's ECW set and I had no idea it was Rude initially. "Who's that? Juventud Guerrera?" Then the guy in the mask gets in the ring and Douglas looks him up and down like "shit, that's way the fuck not Juventud Guerrera." I flipped out as soon as he started talking and of course everyone else knew who it was straight away too. As far as ECW dick jokes go I imagine the hung like hamster line is up there as one of the better ones (and Francine's reaction ruled). The pop for Pitbull #1 is wild too and this whole segment came off great.
  11. KB8
    I thought some of his content came off a bit lame, but I agree that he projected an aura of dude you don't really want to mess with pretty well. The crux of his point seemed to be fuck Sabu but fuck the fans as well, even the ones who agree with him, because they haven't earned the right to talk shit about any wrestler the way he has. Fuck everybody, basically. But Sabu especially.
  12. KB8
    Yeah, Tommy's beatdown looked way better than the Triple Threat's. Funk going apeshit and hurling chairs in a fit of rage was also pretty great and I loved Francine responding to her adoring audience by blowing them a collective kiss. Which probably wound them up all the more.
  13. KB8
    Yeesh, that was some acting job by Flash's old man. There's something amusing about the idea of fans calling the studio to check up on a wrestler in 1997. I mean, obviously it was nonsense, but the fact a promotion is still using that line on TV is a throwback in itself. Fitting that it'd be Memphis, I guess.
  14. KB8
    The cynic in me initially thought this was going to be some kind of swerve, but pretty soon it became clear things were on the level and we got a classy little segment out of it. Nice stuff.
  15. KB8
    Fun studio match between two guys who could work this kind of thing in their sleep without ever coming across as two guys working in their sleep. Smothers in particular was really animated and of course these crowds will eat up any shtick around a Lawler punch. I agree with soup that this feels like a natural pairing. Feels like one that could've produced a Mid-South Coliseum classic had their primes coincided a little more conveniently.
  16. KB8
    Haven't Japanese promotions been sort of okay with their handling of intergender matches as well. I mean, not ALL Japanese promotions (I assume), but a while back you'd usually get one match a year where Ishikawa and another one of the Battlarts crew would be involved in an intergender tag. And outside of Ishikawa doing some of his creepy old man shtick it was usually pretty straight. Even the creepy old man shtick led to him getting walloped in the mouth by whichever woman he was leering at so if nothing else it had a decent payoff. Then again I could very well be overselling these matches. I recall Kandori being involved in a couple back in the 90s as well. There was one one where she teamed with Kodo Fuyuki against Tenryu and Ultimo Dragon and they certainly played up that she was a badass. She got to work mostly even with Ultimo Dragon and of course she was laying into Tenryu.
  17. KB8
    Still an absolute whirlwind of a bout. Some of the best, most intricate blink-and-you'll-miss-it matwork ever and really the perfect example of my favourite kind of wrestling at this point in my life as a pro-wrestling nerd. I'm up through 1993 with all of the RINGS footage and Han was basically a phenom straight out the gate, but there were times in his first couple years where he'd take just a few seconds longer to set up one of his awesome throws or takedowns. He always loved those wild hapkido wrist throws, but there was an amusing carny aspect to them where you knew they'd be nigh on impossible to pull off in an actual fight (I mean, it's all fake anyway, but in shoot style it's obviously trying to portray everything as being LEGIT legit). He does one of them right at the start of this and by golly that did not look set up in the slightest. I didn't see him reaching for an arm, didn't see Tamura complying; Han just did something and then he had Tamura's wrist in his hand and Tamura was getting thrown around whether he wanted to be or not. Another thing you notice about Han if you watch some of the lesser bouts is that he's a bit of an underrated striker. He's not nearly as polished as Tamura, but he loves that spinning back fist and he was often happy to trade blows as soon as he came into the promotion. This wasn't striker v grappler as such, but even with Han being a solid striker he can't hang on the feet with Tamura, so the difference in ability there adds a cool - if certainly not uncommon for shoot style - dynamic. Tamura makes a point of going after the legs with kicks and a few times he almost buckles Han. That of course opens the door for other shots and we get the signature Han knockdown after he's been smashed in the gut. In plenty of early Han bouts he'd get up after that and try for the spinning back fist almost immediately. It usually worked too. This time he waits a bit longer, but he tries it anyhow. That Tamura effortlessly sidestepped it was another cool little highlight of the difference in striking. It's hard to describe the matwork because it's all so tricked out and fast and reading about it never does it justice anyway, but it's worth reiterating that Han is the absolute GOAT at occupying limbs and tying you up in preposterous predicaments. He'll grab a leg and you'll reach for the ropes, then he'll grab that arm and you'll have to reach with something else, but then before long he's got you tied up completely and you're fucked. One of the best sub-15 minute matches ever, and if this isn't the best match-up ever it's probably the best trilogy of matches. The wild thing is this might be their weakest/least transcendentally incredible bout (I'd probably say it's #2 behind their 9/97 match but I could see all three of them having a case for being the best).
  18. KB8
    The pinkish background here sort of reminded me of the Memphis studio during those earliest matches on the DVDVR 80s set. Thought Giant's promo was good and an effective way to further build Souled Out, so that's about all you can ask for.
  19. KB8
    Fairly heated last few minutes before the inevitable Nash/Syxx interference. Luger actually holds them off for quite a while and does an admirable job of it. He's been booked fairly well as one of WCW's top babyface defenders against the Outsiders and Hogan. He picked up the first real victory for them at Starrcade and here he successfully went one on three against the three biggest nWo members outside of Hogan (well, Syxx is probably arguable). Steiners come out to even the odds and we get a decent brawl to close the show. Scott Steiner looked rough here, btw. That mullet had seen better days and he looks bloated to heck. Never really thought about Eddie, but yeah, he probably could've done with the exposure there.
  20. KB8
    This was probably a bit too on the nose that they were trying to capture that Great American Bash lightning in the bottle, because they headed for the bathrooms straight away, but at the same time they worked a great little seven minute potatofest. They actually wrestle most of this IN the bathroom this time, rather than doing a brief pit stop there before taking the fight elsewhere ala the GAB. Benoit flies into a radiator and hand dryer, Sullivan gets conked with a bin and chucked into a cubicle, the referee ends up in a urinal. On their way back to the ring Sullivan absolutely heaves Benoit down the stairs and Benoit takes a fucking bonkers bump down about forty stairs. Finish was maybe a wee bit daft but post-match Benoit BLASTS Sullivan with a folding patio chair. I'll be honest, I could watch these two potato each other for days (although yeah, there's a sort of creepiness to the Benoit/Nancy stuff).
  21. KB8
    This isn't really the kind of thing I care too much about in 2019. It had some okay bits, though, and tbh I probably liked it better than Starrcade as well. Crowd were actually super hot for Dean and plenty of his legwork was pretty good. The dynamic is sort of backwards because he - the babyface - works more like a heel while Ultimo - the heel - does babyface highspots, but the crowd cheer Malenko and boo Ultimo so I guess it works fine? Ultimo doesn't give a rip about selling any of that leg work and planchas out the ring landing on his feet like those last several minutes were a mere fever dream. I guess we'll go with the finish paying it off anyway.
  22. KB8
    Hogan's "let him through! Get in here!" as Giant has no chance of being let through or actually getting in there ruled. He's the best character in the US right now and the whole ambiance of the nWo promos with the single spotlight and surrounding darkness is great. Both of the Monday flagship shows knocked it out the park this week.
  23. KB8
    Bischoff was absolutely dripping with obnoxiousness here. Liz being visibly uncomfortable and Bischoff feeding off that made the desire to punch him in the mouth all the greater. "All you've ever wanted was two things, Savage: her...and my hair!" The character might've jumped the shark eventually, but he was on point here and really nailed that shit. I thought this was a great promo.
  24. KB8
    I actually had very little recollection of this so holy shit was I way into it. Savage popping folk in the mouth, shoving old ass heads of security on their keisters, telling Bischoff to kiss his ass, all in front of a rabid crowd; man this ruled. The stuff with Sting might've come across as a touch confusing or corny at the time, but I'd guess every single person in that arena were too busy flipping out to care.
  25. KB8
    This had to have been one of the best episodes of RAW in the entire run up to this point, right? I know we only get the good bits on the yearbook, but all of this feels head and shoulders above most of the goofy shit we saw in the first few years. For the first time in a while it feels like the WWF have the makings of something that might actually run Nitro and the nWo close...
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