KB8

I wrote about this a few months ago and thought it was fun. Pretty standard tribute show affair, with the big stars playing their hits and the support act getting to strum a few notes with the headliners. The twist with the partner mishmash did make for a cool Tenryu/Kitahara dynamic, though. Kitahara took the chance to get chippy with his boss and it led to some awesome little nasty exchanges, including Kitahara getting the mount and raining down forearms. Kitahara also absolutely fucking drilled him in the jaw with a left hook and I shit you not Tenryu's sell of it might be the best there's ever been. Then he cracked him back a minute later and I can't do justice to how good this punch was. The muted crowd meant you heard the smack loud and clear, too. Finish was a wee bit sudden, but you watch this for the greatest hits and that was what we got.

On one hand this didn't totally connect with me like I wanted. But then on the other hand it was still a pretty awesome balls out sprint. If nothing else it's yet another notch on the belt that is Negro Casas' case as the best wrestler to ever do it. Sub-10 minute sprints aren't necessarily what I'd think of if someone asked me what Casas was great at, purely because I can't think of many matches like that he's actually been a part of. Lucha Memes is nothing if not a little different, though. Casas came into this off the end of a broken rib and his selling was pretty exceptional all the way through. He'd drop to a knee in between bouts of rapid matwork or rope running, maybe because he hadn't quite convalesced like he thought, maybe because he's almost sixty and sixty year olds need a breather now and then. Aramis is a fun young flier and he wasn't about to go easy on a legend. His challenging of Casas to strike battles maybe bordered on hubris, but it led to a great moment where he took his shirt off mid-chop exchange because he is a man and pain is temporary or whatever, so Casas made to take his trunks off because I guess this is a thing the young folk do these days. Aramis almost topeing himself through the awning support post was outrageous, but of course the people were quick to check on Casas first and foremost, even to the point where it got a laugh out of Casas. I'd be all for Casas doing more of this sort of thing, provided his body held up to it.

But hey, when you don't understand a word of it they really sound like they know what they're talking about!

Really cool little fight. Every match I've seen Nomura in he's been the young guy stepping to the established stars and he's been super fun just about every time. This was him having to deal with a younger version of himself, basically. It wasn't young guy with a chip on his shoulder up against established star/vet. It was young guy with a chip on his shoulder up against slightly older young guy with a chip on his shoulder. I liked Aoki a bunch. He wasn't about to back down and took it to Nomura like Nomura had earned it. I don't know what Nomura had done TO earn it, but Aoki was potatoing him all over the place and put him on his neck with a huge German. I could've done without Nomura popping up from it to land a head kick, but he did drop down afterwards so I guess I'll take delayed selling over no selling. For his part Nomura was really good as well. He threw potatoes right back, his chokes looked air tight and he put the kid in his place when he needed to. The early matwork didn't last very long, but it was more UWF than 70s NWA and they made it look slick. Nomura could be awesome in a few years and if Aoki is willing to crack folk in the jaw like this then I guess he could too.

I've always preferred listening to the Japanese commentary anyway (I don't speak a lick of Japanese, btw), but I'm all about commentators from yesteryear who were prone to over-excitement or hyperbole making a comeback in 2018 by just chilling and calling the action straight. Tony Schiavone was on the MLW show I watched recently and I had no idea he was doing pro-wrestling commentary these days, but there was something about him being there that just felt RIGHT. I'll absolutely check out more MLW this year and it honestly has a lot to do with Schiavone calling things.

I've been thinking about signing up for a month as well. I kind of want to try and catch up with some stuff I've missed from the point it blew up again around 2012, but there aren't that many guys I like and in general it's not a style I'm a fan of, so I'd need to be picky. If I wound up tapping out on the more recent stuff early then I'm sure I'd find enough from the 90s to keep me going for at least a month, so I guess there's always that. I also would not be fucking with the English commentary.

Killer match. I'm still finding my feet with Sabre, but this was the first truly awesome performance of his that I've seen. It's the first time I've seen Allin in any shape or form, and I wasn't sure what I was expecting from him but this wasn't really it. He was pretty great here too, though. His roll-ups out the gate were really sharp and fluid and I like that he tried to take it to the mat with Sabre. He was never going to win like that, but I bought him being too stubborn to actually know it. The story of someone trying to prove himself by taking on an opponent at his own game can sometimes come off as forced, but this didn't and a lot of it was down to Allin's selling and wild reactions. Sabre just abused him for like 85% of the match. Any advantage Allin managed to take was fleeting, as Sabre would continually grab him and torture him. Some of the joint manipulation was absurd, bending an elbow here, fingers there, twisting a wrist, digging knuckles into ribs, moving onto an ankle, driving a knee hard into the mat, often doing two or three things at once. There was a point where he'd tied Allin up in some preposterous fashion and afterwards he celebrated by flexing his flimsy biceps like a big idiot and it ruled. Allin was great trying to fight out of all this, punching himself in the face like he was trying to deviate all that pain from having his limbs contorted to a spot of his choosing. He was coming out of this hurt, but it would be on his terms. The longer it went the more condescending Sabre became, kicking and slapping Allin in the face as the commentators kept noting how out of character it was. You could see him growing annoyed, but Allin wouldn't quit. Maybe it's because he's a moron, but he didn't know how to and eventually it led to openings where he almost scored that upset. The finish being the most brutal piece of misery Sabre inflicted upon him was a pretty fitting way to cap the whole thing off.

Well dang, where did this come from? I've seen more Riddle than I have of just about all the oft-praised modern indie guys, and even if he'll do some daft eye-rolly shit now and then he's generally someone I like a lot. Cobb I'd never seen before and I don't know if this was an outlier for him or not, but I thought he was unbelievable and the match as a whole was fucking awesome. I liked the amateur stuff at the beginning, as they're partners and not about to crack each other in the face just yet, then Riddle takes Cobb over with a throw and you can tell he's satisfied with himself. He isn't a prick about it, but he got one over on his buddy and he enjoyed doing it, as we all do when we get one over on a buddy. Cobb did not enjoy it and so he responded by chucking Riddle all over the place. This was some full on Scott Steiner stuff and I was genuinely in awe at how he was manhandling Riddle. I mean Riddle isn't a bantamweight, but he was sure getting thrown around like he was. After the first one where he got thrown clean cross the ring he had this awesome "what the hell?!" reaction, like he knew Cobb was capable of it but he didn't expect to be on the end of it there. Then Cobb grabbed him again and did about four rotations with Riddle's body, like he was steering a ship in a thunderstorm and Riddle was the wheel, before launching him in whichever direction he felt like launching him. Riddle mostly stopped bothering to try and throw with Cobb after this and instead focused on kneeing him in the face and locking in chokes, but there was one moment where he couldn't help himself and hit a super impressive deadlift gutwrench. My favourite spot of the match was when he hit a big falling kick and roared like some fighting spirit foolery was afoot, but Cobb just grabbed him and popped him over with a rapid low angle German. Cobb also had a strapped up wrist coming in, and while they never played it up huge I did like how it was a subtle little plot point throughout. It never really stopped him from doing anything, but he would grab it in pain once or twice, try and readjust the strapping, then at one point Riddle went to throw on a Kimura before changing his mind as Cobb is still his guy and bros before hoes and such. Riddle's knees are kind of thigh-slappy, but that final shot was a true knockout blow and a great finish to a tremendous little match. I may have to start checking out MLW more often this year. Tony Schiavone doing commentary in 2018 is something I was completely oblivious to but he's probably already my favourite commentator going today. I'm so glad I checked this out.

2000 was definitely a down year for Eddie. Benoit looked like one of the best in the world that year while Eddie was dicking around with the Chyna stuff. It’s always felt to me like Eddie had two peaks, with ‘97 being the first and shorter of the two, then ‘04-‘05 being the longer and even better. He was excellent pretty much his whole second run in WWE, but once he splits from Chavo he goes up a level. I’ve always kind of looked at Eddie v Benoit as peak v longevity in a way. That’s not to say Benoit never had much of a peak, because he obviously did, but Eddie at his best was so good that I’ll take him every time if I have to choose. And I think Benoit’s best match is against Eddie. And Eddie’s my favourite wrestler and I like him more.

I didn't even know he was in LU which shows you how much attention I'd been paying.

I've been using this to check out some indie guys from last year, and man is Jeff Cobb fun as hell. His Riddle match from MLW this year is maybe my favourite match of 2018 so far and he was balls out great in it. Dude was like a stockier Scott Steiner just chucking Riddle around. I want to follow the indies a little closer this year and he's definitely someone I'll seek out more of.

I actually think the only one that's a cakewalk is Misawa/Bret (in favour of Misawa). I like Bret and think he does a number of things really well, but I'd take Misawa without much thought. I'll always have a soft spot for Michaels as he was a favourite when I was a kid, but other than tag work I'd go AJ. The distance for me wouldn't be as wide as it would for most folk, but that's because AJ Styles never flung anyone through a barber shop window and I value that over most things in wrestling. I'd go Danielson over Benoit. Actually, that might not be very close, either. I can't really be bothered talking about Benoit, but the only thing I'd really say he had over Bryan was the execution on stuff.

Yeah, this was pretty tremendous. It isn't ordinarily a style I like very much. I'd say it's somewhere between New Japan main event and junior heavyweight epic and neither of those things appeal too much to me, but I thought they managed to play to the strengths of those styles whilst circumventing their worst aspects. The first ten or so minutes didn't totally connect with me, but it was some decent slow build and I did like how they managed to work in the early parity/stand-off spots without looking like dorks. They didn't feel rote or cheesy and I'm someone who has an inexplicable hatred for parity/stand-off spots. So you know, fair play to them. The missed double stomp in the corner leading to Almas taking the overhead belly-to-belly into the turnbuckles was where they really grabbed me. There were still some iffy parts after that, like the way they sort of hinted at going with the back work without ever really following through on it, and at times I never got much of a sense of PERIL, but largely it built super well and the pacing was excellent. I've seen three Gargano matches in the last two years. He's always been a nutty bumper and he was a fucking lunatic in this, but more than anything else he came across as a true underdog you wanted to succeed. I already knew the result, but there were moments where I was all in on him somehow pulling it out the bag. I got goosebumps when he kicked out of that first hammerlock DDT. I wanted Almas to tap on the No-Escape and deflated like everyone else when he got a foot on the ropes. I thought his distant facials were pretty hokey, but I'll almost always take hokey facial expressions over someone burning through shit to get to the next part of their routine, and at no point did it feel like either one of them were guilty of cutting the moment short. There was some laying around, but it felt earned, and without the laying around there wouldn't be that sense of gravity. The Zelina Vega stuff was done super well too. Obviously Candice hopping the rail and spearing her out her boots was amazing, but beyond the pop it felt like a key part of both Johnny and Almas' story. I guess it was similar to Rock/Lesnar from Summerslam in a way, with Vega as Almas' Heyman and Candice's spear as the surrogate Rock Bottom. Had Vega stuck around there would always be the sense that she was the difference maker. I suppose she still was in a way, but in the end Almas had to go it alone and it wasn't Vega who dragged him to the ropes that second time. It wasn't Vega who hit the ludicrous running knees into the ring post. And it wasn't Vega who pinned Gargano clean as a sheet.

Man, the Authors of Pain have gotten reeeally good. Assuming this is what they are now. I think the last time I saw them was early last year and while I didn't think they looked bad or anything, they never left much of an impression. But they were a ton of fun here. This was a pretty great brutes v technicians match and I thought Akam especially was on point in showing some vulnerability. Fish and O'Reilly had a bunch of cool stuff to work over the knee and Akam sold it all great, trying to swat at flies when the UE would swarm him, doing lots of limping and hopping on one leg. He was always dangerous, but if it looked like he'd caught one of the two the other guy would usually manage to cut him off. At one point both Fish and O'Reilly took turns charging him in the corner and Akam would keep flinging them away, just tossing them over his shoulder or booting them with the good leg, but then Fish improvised and hit a dragon screw around the middle rope to down him again. Fish and O'Reilly worked like a true unit, basically. Rezar came in swinging off the hot tag and the whole finishing stretch was strong, with a couple awesome moments to boot, my favourite being Akam hitting an apron lariat across Bobby Fish's face. Finish with Akam's leg buckling under him leading the to miscue was a cool way to make Fish and O'Reilly look crafty without having either AoP come off as weak. It sets up a rematch pretty well too, and I'd absolutely be down for it.

I haven't gone back to this series since the DVDVR 80s set so I don't exactly remember much in the way of specifics, but I'm not getting the indie sleaze comparison at all. I mean, I'm all about the Japanese indie sleaze and I'll watch Kurisu potato someone all day, but unless my memory of the TM/DK series is WAY off (and, tbf, it very well might be), those matches were nothing like that (maybe it depends on your definition of indie sleazy?). To me they felt like juniors matches that had some fairly spectacular individual moments for the time period, one match where I thought it clicked and they managed to have a coherent contest while still capturing a sense of grittiness (I think it was the 8/5/82 match), but otherwise a whole lot of stuff going on without ever really bringing it together in a satisfying way. That 4/83 match is a total mess to me, and I'm someone who'll almost never not get a kick out of a guy threatening to bottle another guy mid-match. I don't know, it may have fallen out of fashion (or whatever) to an extent, but I honestly just don't think the matches hold up. There are plenty of highly regarded matches/series from the last twenty-thirty years that are still held in high regard. I don't buy this one as being an "it's cool to shit on established classics" thing.

A few years ago I watched pretty much all the WCW I could find from 1992 for a dumb blog project and Saturday Night was an absolute treasure trove of good stuff. WCW TV during those first six months in particular was outrageous. Every week you had at least a couple matches that were decent at worst, a handful that were good and fairly regularly you'd get something really good to great. Most of the booking was built around the Dangerous Alliance and so you had tags and multi-mans pretty regularly, with most of them being at least good. Which you'd probably expect given the roster they had then. I might end up going through everything again if every episode of Saturday Night is right there on the Network (Worldwide and Pro had a few killer matches that year as well, though I'm not sure if any of that is up there yet).

Yeah, this was fun stuff. It's been a minute since I've watched Togo but he looked as good as ever working over that leg. You could see the transition off the ring post coming, but sometimes expecting the payoff only makes its arrival that much sweeter. Nomura seems to be getting better all the time. He was more assured here than the last time I saw him (middle of last year, I think) and his selling of the leg after throwing kicks was more believable than that of guys with tenfold his experience.

I can understand why people aren't all in on Misawa's selling - he's not particularly expressive, certainly - but I think Misawa's selling at its best is absolutely outstanding and maybe better than the best of anybody else's. The way he soldiered on through the last fifteen minutes of the '96 Tag League final was as captivating as I've ever seen in a wrestling match. It was pretty subtle, but it was an incredible performance and he mostly did it through his selling.

These guys seem to have matched up a bunch over the last year and a bit and for whatever reason this is only the second singles match between them that I've watched. They recapped the match from the previous week so I at least know where the 'Roman loses the belt on a DQ' stip comes from. They teased that early on as well, with Cole drawing attention to the fact it's the same ref' who DQd Roman last week, the ref' getting in between them like a slightly less obnoxious Tommy Gilbert, and Roman making a point of stepping back and keeping his cool just to erase any doubt. He's already on a tech, can't be pushing it any further just in case. Joe looked real good in this. He threw nasty jabs and meaty shots, hit a great tope that's totally different to every other tope in WWE, worked over the arm in pretty interesting ways and spent large parts of the match shit talking Reigns. That led to a cool bit later where Roman was shouting at Joe to hit him again as Joe slapped him with a little extra mustard. I liked how they started working in all of the stuff around the ref' and Joe trying to get Roman DQd, initially with Joe daring Reigns to hit him with the steps. Loved the whole sequence with Joe throwing Reigns into the ref', Reigns pleading with him because it was an accident, then turning around and getting planted with the Uranage. It felt like a huge nearfall and from that point on the crowd were all in. I thought it lulled a bit in the body, but it had a nice start and the home stretch was great. Joe going from dominant to maybe a touch overly confident to almost desperate for the ref' to do him a solid was a really fun story as well.

I have no clue how Satanico does it. He's nearly sixty now but he honestly doesn't move much differently than he did twenty years ago. It's sort of staggering. Sometimes when the legends are in there with the younger guys (and bare in mind Satanico is pretty much a pensioner) you can tell the latter need to slow it down a little, maybe work at three quarter speed. They have to scale it back a bit, or sell for stuff they maybe wouldn't sell for if it was a peer. You never really get that with Satanico. There were no elements of Hechicero having to sell for old man Baba's ropey chops or pare his own performance back so ninety year old Rusher Kimura wouldn't be killed. It's not a knock on Baba or Kimura, it's something you expect. They're wrestlers, of course they're going to be broken down and losing a step by the time they're sixty. And yet with Satanico you hardly see it. When he launched Hechicero face first into the post and flung him into the seats and then smacked him with one of those seats it didn't look like the younger guy giving the legend a little extra. It didn't look like Hechicero paying homage. It looked like Satanico, one of the best to ever do it, still being the biggest badass on the block. And I have no clue how he does it.

Vampiro setting Sting on fire was probably the last time I bothered watching WCW. It wasn't that I thought it was so stupid that it was offensive to me personally, because I was thirteen and I was probably all about the stupid shit back then, but I'd been losing interest for a while and at that point I remember just kind of throwing my hands up and sticking to WWF from there. The WCW/ECW Invasion angle as a whole didn't turn me off WWF, but at some point during that run it sort of dawned on me that it was basically WWF v WWF with some WCW ham n eggers and so I stopped really paying attention (outside the Rumble and Wrestlemania each year) until Eddie won the title in 2004.

Yeah, this was alright. It was long as fuck but they never really lost me at any point. I mean, it had a few ropey forearm exchanges and the striking generally wasn't amazing, but this is 2018 and it is what it is. I've only seen Sabre a few times, but his tricky submissions are usually pretty fun and more than that he'll just dig his fist or elbow into a body part to manipulate joints. Tanahashi going to the headlock early on to keep from bring tied in knots was decent stuff, even if he doesn't exactly have a Finlay level headlock. The armwork from Sabre was cool and whether it was intentional or just another case of Tanahashi have crummy forearms, the shots thrown with the bad arm coming off as lame as they did actually worked. The progression from the armwork into the legwork was organic enough as well. Tanahashi's dragon screws were the best part of this. The first one felt like it was out of desperation, then the one where Sabre was already on the mat was maybe my favourite spot of the match. They brought it up again later as Sabre was dickishly kicking him in the arm, sort of daring him to grab the leg and try another dragon screw, then when he did Sabre just lunged on him and dragged him into a triangle. It also came up towards the end when Sabre reversed it again into a cradle, and from that point it felt like Tanahashi absolutely couldn't go back to it because Sabre had it so well scouted. Finish itself was pretty great. Long New Japan main events aren't my bag, but I liked this fine.

I make a point of tracking down at least one Fuerza Guerrera match per year so naturally I was hyped about the prospect of this, and naturally I pretty much loved it. Fuerza is about a hundred and six so this wasn't on the slick side, but it was as seedy and filthy as you'd want. It's taking place in what looks like a dirty aircraft hangar and any time they leave the ring we're literally right on top of the action. Thirty two people are in attendance and just about all of them are following along recording it on their phones, so it looks like a wild brawl between two psychopaths outside a nightclub that everyone wants to put on the Twitter. Some truly gruesome close-ups of face-biting and testicle-clamping. Fuerza was biting Demus on the forehead then covered his nose with the free hand, either to precipitate the blood loss or to I guess suffocate him. At one point Demus was on top of Fuerza biting him through the mask and just grabbed hold of his balls and squeezed. Fuerza applied a camel clutch with his grip across Demus' mouth, so Demus broke the hold by chewing Fuerza's wrist. It had so many nasty little moments like that. They were throwing each other around with reckless abandon too, one guy being squashed by Demus while a retreating child almost got trampled as Fuerza was flung into a row of chairs. For a match like this to end with a Boston crab it really needs to be a mean looking Boston crab, and this sure looked like a Boston crab that would put a guy away. This wasn't your granny's Walls of Jericho.

I had this top 5 on the New Japan 80s set. Unfortunately I don't remember much about it specifically now. Is this the one where they kind of lie there having grabbed a kneebar and briefly start shit talking each other? Because I'm pretty sure they did that in a match together and it was awesome. I should re-watch this.

I'm aware of how they work. The comparison's a little apples and oranges in some ways, but are you telling me you can't discern certain strengths and weaknesses - or even talent, I guess - from watching Japanese workers in the first few years of their career? Even in a promotion where the hierarchy was as rigid as All Japan's, people have written shit loads about how Kobashi looked like a prodigy a year in. You could see pretty early on that Naoki Sano was going to be good and I don't know if he won a match until year three. It didn't take long for it to look like Tamura was going to be shit hot. I've seen early Yoshida where she was already super fun. There are tonnes of examples. Taking a little while longer to "get it" doesn't necessarily mean you're a less talented wrestler anyway, but my point wasn't so much about the comparison between Danielson and those three as opposed to the broader idea of Danielson clearly looking great relatively early in his career. Certainly as talented in some ways as Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi.