KB8

Watched the Terry/Che caballeras and re-watched the lead in mano a mano. First match is fucking great; total bloodbath. There's a close up of them lying in amongst a stack of chairs after a Che tope where they're headbutting each other. It ruled. Also get close ups of bloodstains on the mat. They seriously fucking BLEED. Couple bits with the ref' annoyed me, but they were brief. Wasn't feeling Che in control much this time, either. He does a lot of preening and posturing, but it wasn't as good preening and posturing as the preening and posturing in the hair match. Terry's comeback was tremendous and kicked the match into another gear completely. The rope running spot was pretty jarring the first time I saw it. It wasn't jarring this time, but it still felt a bit out of place. Hair match is awesome and I liked it even better than the lead-in. Che was better here and Terry was who he always is. Not as much sickening blood loss, but still plenty enough to keep the vampire in us happy. Terry hurling a chair at Che's second after he'd been interfering in the first two falls was the best spot for the year. The schmozz overbooking towards the end is what it is, but I didn't hate it for the fact it led to Alan Extreme hitting a fucking CRUSHING tope on Che's second. If there were children or the elderly sitting in the first 6 rows they ALL would've been slaughtered. Actually THAT is the best spot of the year. Also more HEADBUTTS. Hair match might be my MOTY right now. Might try and put a list together at some point. Then again, I say that every year and fail miserably.

Steamboat/Santana v Dream Team is really good, yeah. If you're not planning on just sticking to more recent(ish) stuff, I'd check out the Rockers/Powers of Pain match from the 1/15/90 MSG show. It's maybe my favourite tag match ever. For more recent matches, MNM had at least at couple really fun matches with Batista and Rey in '05 (maybe into early '06 as well). The Smackdown! match from 12/30/05 is a ton of fun, and offhand I'd say it's one of the better WWE tags from that decade. Rey gets his knee worked over and takes at least one nutso bump that probably burst his kidneys.

"Fuck, fuck, fuckin', fuck, fuck, fuckin', fuckin', fuck, fuckin', fuck, then he sent me a fuckin' 8 by 10."

I'm really looking forward to re-watching this. There aren't more than 4 wrestlers in history I like more than Fuerza, and I recall him being terrific in this as well. I actually liked this a bit more than the 6/18 match later in the year, but both are excellent. Both are pretty good shouts for the top 5 matches in AAA history.

Yeah, this was really great stuff. I've been kind of apathetic towards a lot of the juniors stuff so far, but I dug this a good deal. Lots of piss and vinegar and the M-Pro guys were great additions.

That double stomp to the knee looked horrendous. Good grief. Back fist at the end looked pretty fuggin' face-breaky as well.

Finished March, but I took a break at some point and don't really remember everything very well. Fuck it. 1. Toshiaki Kawada vs. Akira Taue (AJ 3/31/96) 2. El Hijo Del Santo, Atlantis, El Dandy y Lizmark vs. Blue Panther, Felino, Dr. Wagner y Negro Casas (CMLL 3/15/96) 3. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi (AJ 3/31/96) 4. Great Sasuke & Tiger Mask IV & Shiryu vs. Super Delphin & Taka Michinoku & Gran Naniwa (Michinoku Pro 3/16/96) 5. Steven Regal vs. Fit Finlay (Uncensored 3/24/96) 6. Roddy Piper vs. Goldust (Hollywood Backlot Brawl) (Mania 3/31/96) 7. Shawn Michaels vs. 1-2-3 Kid (RAW 3/4/96) 8. Rey Misterio Jr vs. Juventud Guerrera (2/3 falls) (ECW 3/9/96) 9. Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels (Ironman Match) (Mania 3/31/96) 10. Jushin Liger vs. Shinjiro Otani (NJ 3/17/96) 11. Cactus Jack vs. Mikey Whipwreck (ECW 3/9/96) 12. Shawn Michaels vs. Leif Cassidy (RAW 3/25/96) 13. Rey Misterio Jr vs. Juventud Guerrera (AAA 3/16/96) 14. Psicosis vs. Ultraman (AAA 3/16/96) 15. Road Warriors vs. Rick & Scott Steiner (Nitro 3/11/96) 16. Manami Toyota vs. Sakie Hasegawa (AJW 3/20/96) 17. Bret Hart & Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels & Diesel (MSG 3/17/96) 18. Ric Flair vs. The Giant (Nitro 3/25/96) 19. Wild Pegasus vs. Shinjiro Otani (NJ 3/20/96) 20. Nobuhiko Takada vs. Shiro Koshinaka (NJ 3/1/96) 21. Finlay vs. Randy Savage (Nitro 3/25/96) 22. Manami Toyota vs. Kyoko Inoue (AJW 3/31/96) 23. Ric Flair vs. Sting (WCWSN 3/2/96) 24. Sting & Lex Luger vs. Marcus Bagwell & Scotty Riggs (Nitro 3/25/96) 25. Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Psicosis (AAA 3/1/96) Top three matches there are my working top three for the year. I liked Kawada/Taue a bit more because, even though it went longer, they rolled out way less in terms of bombs down the stretch than Misawa/Kobashi and still got the same molten reactions for nearfalls. The build to the powerbomb was really terrific. The CMLL match from 3/15 was awesome. All star line-up that didn't disappoint. Dandy and Casas have looked exceptional in everything they've been in so far, to the point where I'd say they're arguably two of the three best in the world at this stage. The Backlot brawl from 'Mania was so much fun. Piper threw one of the fucking BEST punches ever. Couldn't really get into Toyota/Hasegawa and struggled even more to get into Toyota/Kyoko. The constant momentum shifts just take me out of it. I get that it's part and parcel with a lot of the style, but I've resigned myself to the fact that the style isn't really for me (and it never really has been).

I've hardly seen any FMW Fuyuki, but All Japan Fuyuki was great and WAR Fuyuki is fucking awesome. That tag with him and Hara against Hashimoto and Ohara is out of this world awesome and Fuyuki is just a lumpy ass-stomper the whole time. Trip fans reading this thread will probably think a lot of what's been said is a bit "out there," but I'd say that match is literally better than anything Helmsley has ever done in his career.

Anybody who has ever tried to powerbomb Kidman. If you try and powerbomb someone that is unpowerbombable, do you have a psychological weakness? If so, every wrestler that's ever wrestled Kidman has that psychological weakness.

Michaels' back post-comeback was definitely played up pretty regularly.

Can't/won't speak for Dylan, but I think a good deal of the case for his '05 being strong hangs on the Flair stuff. I also liked the HIAC with Batista and I loved the cage match with Flair. If you're not particularly fond of the Flair stuff then you probably won't go to bat for Helmsley being all that good that year (at least from a "work" standpoint. The fact he more or less made Batista is a plus even if one doesn't like the matches). Wouldn't put him anywhere near a guy like Eddie or Rey in '05, but I definitely do agree with Dylan in that there were points in '05 and '08 (I liked the Hardy matches a good deal at the time (especially No Mercy), thought the Cena match from Night of Champions was a good WWE Main Event, etc.) where he looked a billion times better than he did in that awful run post-quad tear. In '08 I thought he at least looked "good," whereas in '04 I'd rather have watched psycho geriatric Flair and even thought Batista was more interesting in a bunch of tags they were both involved in. Shit, you could probably say he was the weakest guy in his stable in '04, despite being "the ace" of it.

I'd probably rather watch Helmsley than Zenk. I think I find Dory at his worst even more boring than Helmsley at his worst. Maybe.

Yeah, this was manly beyond description. Felt like a real struggle and both guys really beat the shit out of each other. Hashimoto is everything good about the pro-wrestling.

You can kick JC Ice's dog, but if you ever talk shit about his mama, you're a dead man. I'm really looking forward to seeing the UWSA and SMW stuff on the set. And this was great.

I'm definitely with Childs here. This is just not my thing at all. I mean, joshi isn't my favourite style of wrestling to begin with, but I've enjoyed enough of it on the '93 yearbook (watched Hokuto/Saito from August a few days ago and thought it was really good, for example) and found that crazy 8-woman sprint on the '96 yearbook (from February, I think) SHOCKINGLY enjoyable...but I pretty much threw my hands up on this after about 5 minutes. The niggly stuff early with the camel clutches was cool, and Takako would at least do something like flip the crowd off or act like a bitch now and again, but on the whole I didn't care for it one bit.

I still prefer Wrestlemania VIII, but they both have similar themes, and it's not like I'd put a ton of daylight between them, anyway. Savage's sell of the leg wasn't quite as spectacular here as it was at Wrestlemania, but he throws great hopping punches, punches from his knees, punches while he's lying on his back (which is awesome), and comes across as a guy that really wants to hurt Flair. At Wrestlemania it was about Liz; here's about his dad. Finish looked real fucking nasty, too. Feels like the best match they had in WCW.

Watched this again last night, and I still love it. Steamboat is just out of this world spectacular as a face in peril in the third fall. Would've liked him to be worked over for a few minutes longer, but what can you do? Babyfaces probably take too much of it on the whole, but that's another minor quibble. I'm with Dylan -- this feels like it belongs at the top end of a top 100.

I haven't seen any of it yet, but I got a text at 8 o' clock this morning from a friend saying the same thing.

Yeah, I always get really long winded when I write about stuff because I want to talk about all the good bits. I'm easily pleased, so there tends to be a lot of stuff I'd throw in the "good bits" category.

That Eddie/Rock match is one of my favourite matches of all time. I never knew it existed either until I got to it on Will's Eddie set. Not really a "great match," but it's my favourite wrestler ever against a guy I really, really like, and it was a total blast for the 8 or so minutes it got.

Hell with that, they should get M.I.A just so Tony Kornheiser loses his shit (some more). "Deport her. De. Port. Her."

Do you have a link for this? I saw El-P mention it a few days ago as well and wanted to check it out. The preview I watched on youtube was good for what it was, but I can't find anything other than that.

Buddy Rose v Stan Stasiak (11/17/79) Didn't think this was as great as the 6-man from 10/27, but fuck Rose was tremendous here. He seems to have so much "things" in the holster to bust out that Match A is different from Match B which is different from Match C, and Match D will be different from Matches E, F and G. His sell of the heart punch at the end of the first fall (Stasiak has great looking punches, btw) is amazing. He stumbles away from the ring and he somehow manages to get his face to turn white as a sheet, so you could buy the heart punch being similar to having an anvil dropped on your chest. When he comes out for the second fall he has his fist taped up, but he won't let Sandy Barr check him because he's apparently hurt it so bad that even touching it buckles him over in pain. When Stasiak gets too close Sandy turns around and tries to back him up, so Rose starts pounding the turnbuckle with the taped up hand to show everybody there's nothing wrong with it. He milks this for five straight minutes. Seriously, they actually make contact about three times during that five minute spell. Stasiak manages to get a hold of Buddy's hand and smashes it off the turnbuckle pad, and as Buddy staggers away "in pain" he laughs at the crowd and starts jawing with two old women. When he gets close to Stasiak he throws a few shots to the ribs with the taped hand, and Stasiak has this great sell of it. Frank Bonnema is wondering if there's not a little more to that fist than just tape, because body shots like that usually don't cause as much damage as they're causing right now. Then Buddy catches him with a left hook square on the button and Stasiak's KO sell is just out of this world spectacular. Between falls Stasiak gets his own fist taped up and Buddy wants no part of it in the third fall. Stasiak at least lets the ref' check to make sure it's just tape and nothing else, so he lets it fly much to Buddy's displeasure. They wind up on the floor and Buddy gets posted, and eventually they run a really cool count out finish. They're both standing on the apron as Barr is counting them out, and as Stasiak hits the heart punch Buddy flies through the ropes back into the ring while Stasiak is a second too late and gets counted out. Normally the title can't change hands on a DQ, but since this was a count out it does, although Buddy is half out of it and doesn't seem to know what happened for a few minutes. I don't remember having seen any Stan Stasiak before this, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was REALLY good stuff. Is there footage of the taped fist match, or did Will procure practically everything when making this set and that wasn't there (or was it just not very good)?

Also echoing the love for that tag. Really awesome stuff. I remember Eddie reversing a leg sweep into a hurricanrana, which is a spot that's always stuck with me (since it blew my mind).