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Tim Cooke

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I would love to see this dvd some time. Now, this was around the same time that they were running the cage-match turkey battle royals, where the "loser" was the last guy to escape the cage. This particular card was scheduled to be that, but the state athletic commission came down on them for some reason, and they ended up having all of the participants work a gauntlet style match instead. I might be confusing stories though. Someone back me up on this or straighten my ass out :)

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I came across the 10/10/96 M-Pro show on youtube the other day and gave it a watch. Great fun! Such a inspired blend of styles. Love that you're getting southern style heat and stooging with lucha rules, lucha dives, joshi heeling etc. And that's just the tags!

 

Yuki Ishikawa & Alexander Otsuka vs. Daisuke Ikeda & Satoshi Yoneyama

This left a big impression. Whenever I tried shootstyle before I grew bored and put something more immediate on instead. This blow me away. It had the mat stuff but it was still very pro wrestling. I kind of hated it and felt uncomfortable watching it (why the fuck are you idiots ACTUALLY beating the shit out of each other?). But I was mesmerised. Ishikawa I especially hate. What an unpleasant, sourly, brutal, brutal prick. Love him.

 

I know fuck all about this stuff. Is BattlArts the promotion I need to crack onto?

 

Johnny Saint vs. Naohiro Hoshikawa

They were going WOS with this and I don't think it quite clicked. The chemistry wasn't really there for the fancy stuff. Saint was often sloppy and Hoshikawa didn't bring much else to the table. I still enjoyed this though, partly for the novelty of seeing this style play out in front of a hot Sumo hall crowd and partly because I can't dislike a Johnny Saint. His stuff is too cutesy at times but he has that goofy Bob Backlund charisma about him and crowds lap him up, like I do.

 

Don Caras, Kuniaki Kobayashi & Dynamite Kid vs. Mil Mascaras, Tiger Mask & Great Sasuke

Shit, didn't intend to do a match by match review thing, how did I get here? All I remember about this match was having a chuckle at Sasuke's bevy of belts and broads. It was during his ridiculous and fantastic ring introduction that I thought I'm glad I'm watching this stuff instead stroking my chin to All Japan epics. 1996 Dynamite Kid wasn't so fun. Regardless of what you think of him he was a sad sight at this point, brittle as a bog of toenails. Is that the original Tiger Mask? I'm stunned by how athletic he still is.

 

Masato Yakushiji, Gran Naniwa, Tiger Mask 4, Gran Hamada, & Super Delfin vs. TAKA Michinoku, Shoichi Funaki, Shiryu, MEN'S Teioh, & Dick Togo

What a ride! I won't lie - I've watched a few MPro tags since this and my fried memory can't recall one match from the other - but they're all great. Nary a dull moment. Awesome heel team work from Taka and the lads, funny banana peel spots, crazy, crisp high spots, crab walking! Nice ebb and flow to the pace. I can see where Chikara got their schtick from. MPRO has much better match layout, better humour and better, better, ten times better work. Super Delfin's my new favourite wrestler.

 

Hayabusa vs. Jinsei Shinzaki

Shinzaki looks fucking badass and I wanted to like him, especially when it dawned on me that HAKUSHI. But he was completely uninteresting while selling and working underneath in this match. Hayabusa wasn't much better in control. He was just kinda doing stuff with no real purpose and he's body language seems to be of the "Eh. Can't be arsed" variety. Bit of a wet fart to end on.

 

Enjoyable show overall. The Wellington Wilkins Jr vs. Lenny Lane match wasn't that notable apart from the hilariously failed turncoat attack from the manager. Will keep watching.

 

 

 

 

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Been watching things on my tablet while biking which makes it hard to write too much, but the general ebb and flow of what I've been watching lately is the following.

 

Bock/Brunzell vs Len Denton/Billy Robinson. AJPW, 1980. I can only vaguely conceptualize a lot of the King's Road stuff, but one of my general impressions is sort of what you got in this match. Instead of straight up face/heel dynamics, each character is distinct and has his own motivations outside the usual genre conventions. You definitely had this here. Each guy got to be a face in peril, some of them upwards to three times. All four guys wrestled differently and brought something different to the table. It was enjoyable. I need to go back and watch whatever else there is of the Brunzell/Bockwinkel pairing.

 

the CMLL Parejas Increibles tournament from this year (up to the semis): Some really clever finishes (or maybe just clever to me since I'm not used to them). The Maximo/Escorpion pairing is pretty hilarious but the best part of the whole damn thing was Casas putting his arm around a bemused and untrusting Panther's shoulder. It's so surreal watching Jindrak tower over guys. It made me want to go back and watch last year's and the year before but it's hard to get all of those ducks in a row on a tablet. I might have to make a playlist for myself.

 

Steamboat vs Roberts/Steamboat vs Valentine/Steamboat&Andre vs Fuji&Muraco: There are a few Steamboat vs Roberts matches, but these were the easiest ones to find. I really liked the FIP in the former, with Roberts mainly using punches but using them really well.The crowd was molten for Steamboat/Valentine at MSG. Just nuts. There were a couple of moments where Ricky just stopped everything and channeled the crowd and it was great. Fuji is such a great Andre opponent. Just a perfect stooge to work off of.

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The Fantastics vs. The Mod Squad from Memphis, with the Southern Tag Titles versus $3,000 in gold coins. A finish that can only happen in Memphis: Bobby Fulton gets the O'Connor roll, but gets clocked with the satchel of coins, which are actually washers, and gets pinned. Eddie Marlin reverses the decision. *NOT* because the heels cheated, but because they weren't actually gold coins in the satchel!

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Over the past 2 months I have been on a bit of a WWE DVD buying spree. For cheap I've gotten Greatest Stars of the 90's, Best of Raw & Smackdown 2011, Ricky Steamboat, Greatest Wrestling Stars of the 80's, Hulk Hogan Unreleased and Clash of the Champions sets. I have a long way to go in making my way through these sets but I have really enjoyed getting to see some matches again after decades of not seeing them, namely the Chi-Town Rumble Flair-Steamboat match and the Clash I Flair-Sting match.

 

EDIT:

I decided to put in Disc 2 of the Clash set and YOWZA! Holy Moly there are some good matches on there! Flair vs Luger, Hollywood Blondes vs Four Horsemen, Austin vs Pillman, Regal vs Dustin, Sting & Flair vs Rude & Vader. Just really great stuff! There is a Sting-Rude match that isn't really a good match but it's a great bit of pro wrestling! Excellent stuff on Disc 2 of the Clash set.

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http://culturecrossfire.com/wrestling/chi-town-rumble-89/#.U01CCVcm-So

Ricky Steamboat and Ric Flair renew their classic rivalry, Lex Luger and Barry Windham try and settle a long standing grudge, The Road Warriors battle the massive Dr. Death and devious Kevin Sullivan, Rick Steiner and Mike Rotondo work a UFC style match and Sting tries to take down cagey vet Butch Reed.

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Watching the David Benoit video interview which is kicking around the Internet.

 

What a weird watch listening to Benoit's son trash Dixie Carter, speak about how he never received is Dad's final pay cheque, relationship with Jericho, trashing Raw... just odd. He seems like a proper smarky little weirdo.

 

He supports his Fathers legacy quite strongly. It's not my place to comment on this as obviously (and thankfully) I can't relate to his situation. But I can comment on his face... it's creepy.

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I think people - both fans and performers - who talk about how they choose to remember Chris Benoit The Wrestler don't help matters much at all. As if murdering your wife and child and being a great worker are somehow of equal importance and it's just a matter of personal choice which is more meaningful. People who reject the idea that Benoit's entire life led to that weekend confuse me. He should be remembered as the man who murdered his family first and foremost. Wrestling is small potatoes compared to that.

 

As for David Benoit, I don't want to say too much. It's his dad and he has to reconcile things in a way that works for him. I just hope he's had professional help, just as practically anyone would need to get through something like that.

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SummerSlam 95' on the Network

 

Surprisingly not as terrible as I would've thought by just looking at the card. Decent opener, a surprisingly decent Taker/Kama Casket match, and I'm right now watching Bret Hart wrestle Ka - err, Isaac Yankem. Still to come is the ladder match which I haven't seen in at least 2 years and Diesel vs. Mabel, which I'm expecting to be god awful, but haven't seen before.

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SummerSlam 95' on the Network

 

Surprisingly not as terrible as I would've thought by just looking at the card. Decent opener, a surprisingly decent Taker/Kama Casket match, and I'm right now watching Bret Hart wrestle Ka - err, Isaac Yankem. Still to come is the ladder match which I haven't seen in at least 2 years and Diesel vs. Mabel, which I'm expecting to be god awful, but haven't seen before.

 

Summerslam 1995 was the best PPV they had run in years, it was superb. Don't forget the women's match and Kid / Hakushi. Both were great.

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TNA Impact 4/17/2014

 

The opening segment made me laugh but it wasn't from anything TNA intended. During Dixie's little speech you can clearly hear a fan in the background yell "Just shut up!" I know a lot of people don't have the patience for this but every show has something that makes me laugh a little and usually there's at least one match I enjoy. We'll see if this show has one.

 

Edit: Call me crazy but I really like Spud and EC3. Total comic relief, yes, but they work. Spud's outfits alone make me like him. I also sort of liked the Monster's Ball main event. I can see why a match with barbed wire and thumbtacks on tv in 2014 is a turn off for some and I think that it is beneath Young and doesn't do anything to make his championship run anymore legit but the match itself was fun. I don't see a lot of mentions of death matches on this board which isn't super shocking so I understand it not getting praise here but for what it was I can't say it was horrible. It's so easy to point out the negatives in TNA but I think if you just shut down and don't give it any thought, the show can be enjoyable in a mindless way.

 

Edit x2: I didn't mean to be insulting to anyone here in the last paragraph. I wanted to put that out there before anyone accused me of doing so.

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