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KB8

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  1. KB8
    Yeah, this was great. Everything with Austin is gold because he'll just verbally tear into everyone like a madman, and you buy that given opportunity he'll tear into them physically as well. That jackass line at Monsoon was fucking great. It feels like they're giving him a little more leash every week and boy is he making the most of it. Awesome stuff all around and all the good aspects of Attitude.
  2. KB8
    This was an excellent segment. It along with big brawl to close the show feels like some of the best out of the ring stuff they've had in the show's run up to this point. Also echoing the others in thinking this really felt like a launchpad for them to really get their shit together and start competing with WCW and the red hot nWo. Bret didn't really seem that whiny to me here; if anything he seems entirely justified in being angry. Then again, taking his ball and going home was a bit whiny. Austin's promo was tremendous and he has about twelve absolute zingers. "Son, you better get me some equipment that works or I'm gon' whip your ass."
  3. KB8
    This wasn't doing a ton for me. Kyoko basically deciding fuck it after having her shoulder torn at and hitting four powerbombs in a row like it wasn't a thing struck me as a pretty weak transition, particularly when viewed straight after Misawa/Kobashi. I don't mind Kyoko when she's in there with someone I like and Takako is usually somewhat interesting, but I'd check out the '93 match mentioned earlier before seeking this out in full.
  4. KB8
    Of the two matches from this show, this is the one I'd be more likely to check out in full. Decent selling of exhaustion, a huge back fist, Aja's brutal double stomp, and Ito managing to see out the time limit while even leaving you wondering if the powerbomb at the end might just have been enough for more.
  5. KB8
    Not much left to say about this, but yeah, it's tremendous. Over the last few years I've sometimes struggled a bit early on when rewatching some of the lengthier All Japan superclassics, like even in the '96 Tag League I wasn't totally hooked during the first ten minutes. But they had me here from the very jump and not once did I check out. From the micro to the macro, the selling, the build, the rhythm, it all pretty much clicked into place. I mean, I'm at a point where I can't really be bothered with a heavily extended finishing run, but the fact this could've ended as a MOTYC after 25 minutes and yet they went another 15 hell for leather WITHOUT losing me...yeah. Held up like I hoped and I think I'd still maybe have this as my #1 All Japan match of the decade.
  6. KB8
    This wasn't Ikeda/Ono, but as far as four and a half minute matches go it was pretty choice. They got their stuff in, hit a few big bombs, teased a few bigger ones, made Akiyama look like someone who could potentially hang at the top level in singles matches (with Taue coming off the Tag League final and the tag titles win a few days earlier), and it all came in under five minutes. Sure it was a massive upset, at least in the sense that nine times out of ten even if Akiyama does win it'll take longer than five minutes, but still, All Japan's stodgy booking needed more little fresheners like this. Plus it maybe ever so slightly cast into doubt the length of the upcoming main event...
  7. KB8
    I remember reading about this back in the old DVDVRs. Like, fifteen years ago, not back as in all the way back IN THE DAY of 1997 as at that point I was merely a pup and the internet didn't reach Scotland until 2003 anyhow. I wasn't really hip to the lucha libre then, intent as I was in tracking down the New Japan juniors and the All Japan classics, but I knew Wagner from his stint in Japan and Dean gushing over this match made it seem impossibly cool. Those old DVDVRs were the best. I wish they didn't get ether'd when the board went down, because they probably shaped my tastes in wrestling as much as anything at a time when I was paying £40 for three tapes from fucking Golden Boy and the likes. Anyway, I finally checked this out a few years back on one of the re-released Schneider Comps and it never quite lived up to my hype. Rewatching it today it stands up as being good without ever reaching that upper level, although they aimed for that in the tercera. The first two caidas were pretty neat and made up my favourite stretch of the match. Niebla doesn't necessarily look like he'd be the most graceful flier, but for a light heavyweight he sure could move. At times it looked like Wagner didn't know how to handle him. Everything he tried, Niebla would flip out of it, whether it was landing on his feet off a monkey flip or straight backflipping off the top turnbuckle. You could argue that he went to the dive too early, but it was a great tope and it at least made sense for him to stick with what was working. It followed a similar pattern in the segunda and Wagner was still having trouble keeping him grounded. That Niebla sold the winning crucifix pin between falls longer than the Liger bomb a few minutes earlier was a bit jarring, but Wagner coming out aggressive in the tercera covered well enough. The tercera itself was something that wouldn't have looked out of place in 2007, at least in terms of some individual moments. Then again if you transplanted this into the third fall of a 2007 title match it would look about a hundred times better than the norm. I mean it was largely a collection of bombs, but they built the nearfalls gradually, and even if the flow was a little stop-start it was head and shoulders above your shoddy Mistico/Averno bouts of a decade on. We got some decent legwork for a minute there, Wagner stopping mid-beating to get on the house mic and talk trash, and Niebla's second tope was a peach. Wagner dipping into his New Japan bag was a cool touch as well and the finish looked brutal. Not a classic, but 1997 was an absolutely loaded year so I guess it's hard to stack up.
  8. KB8
    Their match from the 7/21 Omni showed ruled as well. It's a rare opportunity to watch Flair work as pure babyface World Champ during his absolute peak and the match was a total blast. I somehow didn't make the connection that it was during the Flair/Nikita cage blowoff where they did the angle with Dusty. I knew they did that angle during *a* Flair/Nikita cage match, but for some reason I figured that angle came a bit later and assumed there was another Flair/Nikita match down the line or something. I actually watched this on the set and it really is one of the all-time best angles. You hear some of the old timers talk about how wrestlers used to get REAL HEAT back in the day and if you were good you could almost start a riot, and sometimes it comes off as being carny as fuck, but this crowd was legit ready to jump the ring and cops were almost being squashed up against the cage trying to keep them out. Also, Tully mentions on one of the WWE-released DVDs from years back (probably the Four Horsemen one) that Flair always had pockets of fans in the crowd even when he was heel because of how cool he was (and watching everything leading up to that angle, he was the fucking coolest). If you've seen enough of him you know it's true. He says after the Dusty angle, though, there was way more animosity towards him and he started getting even more heat. I haven't gotten very far past that point yet, but even on TV the week after the angle Flair is different, as are fans in the studio and the way they react to him. He's not just the jet-flyin', limousine-ridin' son of a gun anymore; he's one of the thugs who broke Dusty's leg and no amount of swag will change that. Flair's first promo on TV is absolutely incredible as well. Crockett says Dusty should've left him there for the Russians and Flair just cold as ice puts him in his place. It was such an awesome retort (and I'm so lame) I even took a note of it on my phone: "David, what I like about you is that you've always got something nice to say about me. But next time you have an opportunity, talk to your accountant and see who built the building your office is in." I should hop back on this.
  9. KB8
    I took a break from it not long after the point where Baby Doll's thirty days of hell with Dusty comes to an end. I've gone on to a few different sets since then, but I'm watching a bunch of wrestling right now and will very likely cycle back around to it soon.
  10. KB8
    I watched this in its entirety a while back and it was mostly whatever, but the finishing stretch comes off alright minus one spot where Shawn is clearly and obviously telling Sid what to do (the Lothario spot). Shawn taking a powerbomb on the floor and being up and about fifteen seconds later was sort of rubbish, but Sid grabbing both Lotharios by the throat while Lawler howls in glee makes up for it (I mean, I guess). The bit with the camera is a nice revenge spot from Survivor Series, the pop for the finish is huge, and the post-match feels like a proper celebration. I've always loved the atmosphere for this event and it's certainly a stark contrast to the types of crowds the WWF had been running in front of the previous few years. Did they ever run the Alamodome again? This and the SkyDome always had a special aura to me as a kid.
  11. KB8
    I've always really liked the ending to this and thought the booking of it was pretty great. Bret really did sell the shit out of it as well. He always tended to be so laid back, even as a heel a decade prior, that when he truly lost his mind like he did here it came off super legit. Loved Lawler shit talking him before Bret came over to the desk, his pointing at Vince when Bret is reading them the riot act, then shit talking him again as Bret leaves.
  12. KB8
    Well joshi is three for three in the month of January and I guess I liked this more than the rest of you. I thought it was borderline great and it's the most I've enjoyed Ozaki in years. I struggle with her more than any of the other highly-praised joshi workers, but I'm with Loss in thinking she was really good here. Even as someone who isn't usually bothered about execution I sometimes find her stuff hard to buy, as it'll veer more towards sloppy bad rather than sloppy reckless. Here she hit pretty much everything well, and even if she whiffed a few things there was a scrappy element to it. Matching up against Chigusa she basically had to ramp up the stiffness a bit and when her strikes didn't look good Chigusa could viably shrug them off anyway. There were a few moments where they got involved in super rough and uncooperative exchanges and I loved Ozaki just slapping Chigusa's partners in the face when they tried to interject. That happened during one of the floor brawling segments as Satomura came to get her a piece and Ozaki just pie-faced her really hard. She also threw an absolute corker of a back fist at one point, coming out of nowhere and getting an audible "holy shit" out of me. It's been ages since I've watched any Chigusa but I thought she was a really fun tank in this. It made sense for her to absorb more hits than her partners and the spot where Nagashima and Sato finally managed to take her out felt like a significant moment. There was one punt to Ozaki's head that was ridiculous as well. All four of the younger girls ranged from decent to really good and the nature of the match helped everything feel frantic rather than overly go-go-go. This might be the earliest Satomura I've seen and I thought she looked first class, especially when she was stepping to Ozaki. Team Chiggy going about business with a clear chip on their shoulders added a cool dynamic to this as well and a few times Chigusa would smack someone in the face and flip the finger to her partners. I could've done without the plunder towards the end, but it didn't last long and we got a couple brutal bumps out of it, so I can deal. I'll usually always get something out of a wild six-person tag, and whether it was my lowish expectations going in or not, this gave me more than I figured and I enjoyed it a lot. I certainly liked it more than anything Ozaki was involved in on the '96 yearbook.
  13. KB8
    Really fun segment. As a match it obviously wasn't much, but the brawl felt plenty chaotic and of course Funk coming back out to get some more of Austin ruled. HHH smashing a poll cue over Goldust, Funk getting backdropped into a tub full of beer, drunk folk in dixie shorts and cowboy hats getting caught in the crossfire -- a fun way to build to the rumble and certainly felt way more chaotic than the more goofy/amusing nature of previous weeks.
  14. KB8
    This was Greco at his suffocating best. He dominated most of this with his grappling and at times it was hard to see Taira having a lifeline. When it looked like he might be able to at least bring the fight to its feet - where he'd conceivably have more chance of doing something - Greco would grab a cravate from his own back and twist Taira back to the mat. It's not even that Taira is useless on the ground -- he has some moments and works his way into the mount nicely at one point, it's just that Greco is in full demon mode on the night and that'll be a struggle for anyone. Towards the end we even got to see him unload with some knee combos so maybe Taira doesn't have an advantage on the feet either. There were a couple rope running sequences that felt a wee bit jarring given the previous ten minutes, but I don't think I've ever seen a cross body score a nearfall in Battlarts before, and I suppose you could look at it as Taira having to get especially creative just to weather the Greco storm. Taira had a quietly fun year in 2000 and Greco being quietly awesome in general is kind of his thing.
  15. KB8
    This was like 40% Battlarts, 60% New Japan juniors. It's not really what you want from these two, but you take that 40% when it's there and I guess if nothing else it's interesting seeing how they approach the 60%. There's a kind of novelty aspect to it. It's a little experimental. I don't know man, you want Aquemini André 3000 but at this point you take what you can get and even The Love Below had 'A Life in the Day of Benjamin André.' Ono was actually really fun dicking it up and working full rudo. He went after Usuda's leg for a spell and would hold on longer than necessary on rope breaks, then he went after the arm and approached that the same way. In between he even raked Usuda's eyes across the ropes. He was visibly pulling a lot of his shots though, his punches mostly grazing and his kicks thrown with less mustard, some of them at three quarter speed. Usuda was doing the same so maybe they just decided they wanted to get through this show with all their teeth for a change? Considering Usuda was pulling double duty on the card it's hard to blame them. And yet we will, because we are the harshest of critics. Usuda channeling Fujiwara for a few minutes there was cool, at least. He rolled out the headstand counter to the Boston Crab and even followed up with some Fujiwara-style headbutts, rocking all the way back before delivering the blow. It's hard to complain about Takeshi Ono footage being available on the internet.
  16. KB8
    This is honest to god one of my favourite segments ever. I first saw it on Will’s Terry Funk comp (think it’s still the only thing I’d seen from Shotgun prior to the yearbook) and couldn’t believe they let Funk go wild like that. The fact they didn’t and Funk did it anyway isn’t surprising, and if anything makes it even more awesome. Funk calling McMahon a yankee bastard, Pettingill’s mother a whore, Ross an Okie asshole, going off on the cowards from the Dubya See Dubya, all of it ruled. Austin came across perfect as well. He was calm and composed through Funk’s tirade, but he had that underlying badass aura down and managed to get a few great lines in himself. JR: “he’s an icon!” Vince: “he is indeed.” Austin: “he’s a jackass.” I’d be surprised if this isn’t the highlight of the Shotgun experiment.
  17. KB8
    This was exceptional, maybe the second or third best Battlarts tag of the year. It went 17 minutes, the first half almost entirely matwork, and all four were out there doing some truly high end Battlarts matwork. Every match-up we saw worked, though they saved Ikeda/Ishikawa for the back half. A couple times they threw each other a look that said they'll cross that bridge in due course, and at one point they wound up in the ring together only for Ishikawa to quickly duck out, almost as a middle finger even though we all knew it wouldn't be long before they got to the slaughtering. Ikeda/Usuda made for a fine stand-in and their brief exchange was great. The grappling was fierce and I loved Ikeda trying to force Usuda into various positions by punching him in the ribs, neck and stomach. He'd have the mount, rain down strikes, eventually Usuda would have to give up his back, and as was his wont Ikeda would crack him in the back of the head a few times before trying to grab the choke. Then about halfway in Ikeda lands the first blow on Ishikawa -- an illegal one where Ishikawa ends up a little too close to the wrong corner and Ikeda comes in swinging. From there everyone ramps up the violence and we get the high end Battlarts murder strikes to go with the grappling. Ikeda spin kicking guys in the lungs, Ishikawa jacking his jaw with a little extra venom than even that match-up is used to, Greco and Usuda reeling out crazy quick combos. Towards the end Ishikawa and Usuda have a dual submission on Greco and you're thinking it's only a matter of time before Ikeda comes in and drills someone and then obviously he runs over and absolutely crushes Usuda's head with a kneedrop. I mean this thing was just hideous. I think my favourite spot of the match was when Ishikawa had almost secured the mount on Greco, but the he took a second to look up at Ikeda, maybe to make sure his old enemy had kept himself to the apron, maybe to let him know that he definitely still hated his guts. Maybe he became a prisoner of his own disgust then because he let himself linger a bit too long and Greco nuked him with an up kick that put him on his back. It probably could've done with an extra few minutes to really elevate it into the upper tier, but even still it feels like one of the better matches of an incredibly stacked year. And that finish was a fucking finish.
  18. KB8
    I loved a whole bunch of this. Suzuki was rocking the purple again so you already know he was top drawer, but I could count on one finger the amount of times I've enjoyed Sekimoto this much and that was when he wrestled Suzuki the last time. Their previous match was the thirty minute draw from earlier in the month and this had a lot of the same qualities. This was a tighter affair at only nineteen minutes, but it was fully-formed and they built on some of that groundwork laid before. The sense of struggle they managed to convey was really impressive and the early hold-trading was great. Suzuki is always adding cool and nasty little touches to his matwork, like digging his knee into Sekimoto's ankle joint or bending a wrist at horrible angles. It all felt very MUGAish. Sekimoto was really vocal with his selling as well so you bought all that joint manipulation hurting like a bastard. He also reversed a top wristlock into this rough key lock of sorts that looked like it could've snapped Suzuki's forearm. After that opening spell they moved into a short burst of strikes, and I shit you not the first forearm Suzuki threw was a Battlarts Hall of Fame level brain-scrambler. Maybe Sekimoto's taken so many crowbars to the skull at this point that his reactions to this stuff are genuine, but I thought he sold a bunch of Suzuki's strikes throughout the match amazingly. There was almost no goofy hulk up fighting spirit and when he got clocked with a true screamer he went with his best dead-eyed "oh Christ where even am I?" Kawada stare. Plus he'll always leather you back so we got some monstrous clubbering in return. After a cool spot where Suzuki catches Sekimoto mid-tope with a forearm (which Sekimoto sells by laying half dead on the apron) they go back to this awesome MUGA/BJW hybrid right through to the finish. Like in the last match it was Suzuki who had the edge in grappling, but Sekimoto is a brick shithouse with enough freakish strength to make up for it. Suzuki was dogged going for the octopus stretch, twisting Sekimoto's fingers for leverage and crawling all over him at one point, but Sekimoto could either muscle him up into a torture rack or drag himself to the ropes. By the end of the last match you got the sense that if one of them could've hit their finisher it would've been over. This had the same struggle over those finishers, the same sense that it would only take one. There was this great bit where Sekimoto was straining so hard to hit the deadlift German that I expected his gum shield to fly out and kill a person sitting front row. Really good match.
  19. KB8
    Shorter, tighter, better match than last week. They definitely looked like they were on the same page this time, whereas the previous week things got a little choppy and awkward at points. For five minutes on the B/C show you can't really ask for much more.
  20. KB8
    Great Lawler interview, even hinting at the shift in landscape of pro-wrestling, where anti-establishment rules and people are starting to get behind the guys fighting the system. A cool bit of foreshadowing there, although I doubt he knew just how right he'd prove to be about that over the next few years. Memphis feels like a relic at this point, but it's a charming one and a cool contrast to the Big Two + ECW.
  21. KB8
    I got my segments mixed up and wrote about this in the other thread, but basically JC's short promo ruled. Feels like the Dundees were feuding one week then on the same side the next for half of 1996, so I'm glad they're continuing the tradition in '97.
  22. KB8
    That flip senton to Flanagan looked absolutely nuts. Only in Memphis would a fold out chair be used as a makeshift stretcher. JC's promo's short but packs quite the punch. Pretty much any promo Jamie Dundee cuts about his mama rules, tbh.
  23. KB8
    I absolutely lost it when they namedropped Kareem Olajuwon. This was a lot of fun and PG-13 looked pretty great doing their thing. I was expecting some sort of fuck finish about two minutes in, but they kept things rolling and then teased about four various Memphis staple finishes at the end. My first thought when I saw the old lady with the walking stick was that it was Moolah playing a blind woman. Then I figured it was Jamie Dundee's mama. Both were wrong but the latter was at least close.
  24. KB8
    I actually thought this was a really fun five minutes when it was Rich/Morton v the Gangstas. Obviously it's not the perfect use of Ricky Morton, obviously you'd rather him work a proper FIP segment, but fuck it, he's Ricky Morton and there aren't many guys who'll sell getting a crutch broken over their back better than him. Rich looks pretty rough here and the short impromptu match with him and Morton was maybe a little sad (the crowd didn't seem terribly interested in the two old dudes in 80s ring gear bleeding and punching each other around), but Tommy's run in ECW does end up having some scuzzy awesomeness. He looks very fish out of water here, though. 80s blowjob babyface (if you could even call him that at this point) isn't really something that was likely to fly in 1997 ECW.
  25. KB8
    Most of this stuff is new to me so I was surprised to see how over the bWo/Stevie turn was with the crowd. The "who was he aiming for???" shtick felt a bit hokey, probably because Styles always comes across as corny to me on commentary, but folks in the live audience sure ate it up. I probably wouldn't go looking for this in its entirety, but it's obviously a hot angle. Also liked Sandman looking at the shirt like "what the fuck am I supposed to do with this?" before choking Raven with it. About as good a use as any, I guess.
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