What are you watching?

[Loss]

Lawler vs Spinks exists along with four other Lawler/Snowman matches worked in the same style. They'll all make the 1990 yearbook.

[Tim Evans]

I mean when Snowman won the title with Spinks as special guest Ref.

[Loss]

Yes, that is one of the other four.

[jdw]

Anyone watch this off the Steamboat DVD?

 

JCP @ Greensboro, NC - Coliseum - March 17, 1984

Boogie Jam 84

NWA World Champion Ric Flair fought Ricky Steamboat to a 60-minute time-limit draw (Ricky Steamboat: The Life of the Dragon)

Thoughts?

 

John

[FLIK]

Watched disc 1 of the Season 1 Stardom Comm that covers their Feb & March 2011 shows and was pretty happy with it. Nothing blow away great but a few good matches with Natsuki*Taiyo & Yoshiko vs Yoko Bito & Iris from 2/12 being the stand out. Of the first class, Yoshiko is def the one who shows the most potential and really seems to "get it". Early on the rest, including Aikawa are a lot more hit & miss, sometimes doing well & other times showing their inexperience and looking completely lost in thear. Yoshiko & Taiyo are a fun pair and i'm stoked to see more of their matches. Still hate Yoshiko's gimmick & gear tho.

 

Also gotta mention that they did a really great job on the editing. A lot of promotions these days are doing these giant compilation dvds whear they stick highlights of multiple shows on 1 disc which can really suck when they're pressed for time and start choping things up. On this one there was minimal editing, all the really important stuff aired in full or near full and the few things that did get shreded were matches I had no interest in anyways.

 

AJW Hand-Held 4/16/1993

1. (Handicap Match) Kaoru Ito vs Saemi Numata & Masami Watanabe

2. (Midgets) Mr. Buddha Man vs Tomezo Tsunokake

3. Bat Yoshinaga & Tomoko Watanabe vs Mima Shimoda & Etsuko Mita

Takako Inoue Concert

4. Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue vs Takako Inoue & Sakie Hasegawa

5. Manami Toyota vs Suzuka Minami

6. Akira Hokuto & Yumiko Hotta vs Bull Nakano & Aja Kong

 

Undercard is your standard low lvl house show stuff, opener is one of the worst matches of the year. Toyota vs Suzuka is a nice little hidden gem tho & worth tracking down. They don't go as heavy on the near falls/big moves down the stretch as normal but other then that they bust just as much ass as they would on a bigger show. Like this better then their 91 match. Hokuto/Hotta vs Bull/Aja is damn good too as it's about 85% Hokuto taking a shit kicking and then making a fired up comeback and getting a surprise (she was still fairly protected) clean pin on Bull. A nice compliment for the "Hokuto best in the world in 93" argument. For her part Hotta was good too, took her share of the beating when she was in and played the clean up role well.

[Tim Evans]

Just finished August 1990 in my USWA watching. Evansville feed seems to have stopped airing Texas footage and just doing Memphis. Eddie Gilbert returned after Bill Dundee was going to pay him $5,000 bucks to be his tag partner on a Monday night vs Dirty White Boy and John Tatum. Of course it was all a ruse as Dundee needed help on TV and Eddie says "You gotta pay me more for that". Awesome dick heel move there. This leads to some good Lawler/Dundee vs DWB/Gilbert matches. Eventually John Tatum joins the ranks after dressing up like a monkey mascot and attacking Lawler and Dundee on tv.

 

My favorite angle is the Jeff Gaylord/Scott Braddock/Downtown Bruno vs Kowabunga feud. Chris Champion as a wrestling Ninja Turtle is just great. I love the video of him at was I would guess is Jerry Lawler's house making out to Lawler matches and shitting on CSPAN. All while he's talking to Spinter the rat.

 

I also didn't know Snowman lasted as long as he did. He had a feud with Brian Lee and was a babyface.

[El-P]

Justin Credible vs Carl Oulette - HCTV 2000.07.16

I'm glad I got my hands on those 2000 HCTV so I got to see that match. I've always been an Oulette fan, and was gutted he never got a fair shake after the initial Quebecer stint. This is one of his random appearance looking awesome (I know he worked AJ at one point too). Thus far I only got to see him kill referee HC Loc on house shows, but here he delivers one of the best Justin Credible single match I've seen. Justin just gets killed by Oulette who can deliver the big spots in spade. One thing I love about Oulette is the way he puts so much into everything he's doing. It's basically a bomb throwing match, and Francine has to cane Oulette so that Justin can get back on offense. Not for long though before comes one of the most brutal table spot I've seen, as Oulette looks like a cannon ball putting credible through this. A few minutes later, it's the turn of Francine herself, which allows Credible to cane Oulette from behind as he celebrates. Oulette is really one guy who got fucked bad by ECW and WCW going under, as he never got back to WWF for some stupid reasons. He was one hell of a power/spot worker, a great bumper and always brought a lot of intensity to all his matches. Truly a lost worker of the late 90's. Really cool match.

[Tim Evans]

The episode of USWA tv where Lawler gets run over by Eddie Gilbert is interesting. First The Gilberts were fired for attacking Eddie Marlin, Lawler and Brickhouse Brown after a battle royal. Lawler and Brown beg Marlin to bring them back. Then in a interview at the studio, Marlin fires the Gilberts because Eddie said it was a rinky dink promotion. This leads to Lawler getting run down and walking away. Marlin again rehires them. If I remember right, a lot of people actually called the cops on Gilbert. Just a crazy episode. Also features Dirty White Boy giving some fat woman a bladejob right on camera.

[Loss]

Just watched Morton/Gibson from the Great American Bash '91 show in preparation for the '91 yearbook. It's a match that just falls short of great because Gibson doesn't really get a good comeback, but it's an excellent match that really deserves to be revisited. I think it would be far more fondly remembered on a different show.

[Jingus]

Maybe it would have felt better on a different show, but I didn't see much to like about it. That kind of match should've been a fiery blood-soaked Southern brawl, with Robert trying to beat the evil out of his turncoat partner. Instead, it was a sluggish work-the-leg match with Ricky eating up way too much time on offense.

[Loss]

That match started out with fists-a-fury. Gibson had been sidelined for six months with a knee injury -- of course they had to exploit it. If there's a criticism, it's that I wish at the end, Gibson had a longer comeback and maybe one really hot near fall. His selling was top notch, and I loved Morton going after the brace. I loved it.

[Al]

I'm actually watching the Rikidozan biopic. Anyone seen it? Has appearances by Shinya Hashimoto and Keiji Mutoh, among others.

[JerryvonKramer]

After finishing All Japan, I'm planning on plunging back into 1992 Yearbook and watching as much of it as I can before the AWA set comes out. Unfortunately, that means putting my 4 Horseman watching on hold for now, but my time is so stretched these days that I can only really concentrate one at a time.

[Frankensteiner]

I watched some 2003-2005 Smackdown matches lately and it's been ok but really not the type of stuff I would feel the desire to ever re-watch again. Although I can certainly see why people on the internet dig this style with how athletic it is and the constant motion in the ring.

 

One thing that stood out to me for sheer stupidity is those Guerrero and Benoit triple-suplex spots that get reversed at two. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything I dislike more in wrestling than that. The other annoying thing was Cole and Taz just wouldn't shut up during the matches. Like they couldn't possibly have a few seconds of silence.

 

I specifically watched the Guerrero/Lesnar match and the Guerrero/JBL series. The former was ok, really more of a great moment. The JBL matches were pretty good. I've seen them compared to the Bret/Diesel series but I just don't see the comparison. Most importantly the size difference between Eddy/JBL is completely ignored so it's basically a different type of match. The Cage match where JBL was eager to get away from the much smaller Guerrero was strange to say the least. Like when Nash needed police protection from Punk on Raw in the fall. Seems backwards.

[El-P]

One thing that stood out to me for sheer stupidity is those Guerrero and Benoit triple-suplex spots that get reversed at two. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything I dislike more in wrestling than that.

Agreed. The Triple suplex spot was ridiculous because it meant nothing. If one can counter the last suplex, it totally negates the impact of the first two. And what does that imply for one simple suplex, it should be no-sold automatically. That's one thing I hated about those guy working WWF style, is that they had to have cute gimmick spots like this as if just being great wrestlers wasn't enough. Of course the worse in Rey's 619.

[NintendoLogic]

Benoit did rolling Germans in WCW.

[Dylan Waco]

Rolling Germans were beaten into the ground the WWE, though I'm not certain if they are talking about rolling Germans or the three amigos here and I would have to see the match in question to throw out any real judgment on the three amigos which was a spot I thought they usually did well even when the final one was reversed.

 

619 criticism is something I continue to love, especially in comparison to WCW/ECW era Rey where every second offensive move was a rana variation. I mean I see how someone could hate the 619, just as I see how someone can hate a lot of things in wrestling. But complaining about "cute" spot use/overuse and citing 619 as particularly awful is something I will never understand

[NintendoLogic]

I think a lot of the 619 criticism is based on the fact that it forces the opponent to lie prone on the ropes for a ridiculous amount of time. It's like how Booker T forces his opponent to be doubled over for an eternity before hitting the scissors kick.

[Dylan Waco]

For the most part the guys don't lay on the ropes that long and often it sets up a reversal of the move.

[Frankensteiner]

Rolling Germans were beaten into the ground the WWE, though I'm not certain if they are talking about rolling Germans or the three amigos here and I would have to see the match in question to throw out any real judgment on the three amigos which was a spot I thought they usually did well even when the final one was reversed.

When the final suplex is reversed it automatically becomes a horrible spot. I can't see any argument against this.

 

The only difference between the Rolling Germans (Benoit) and the Three Amigos (Guerrero) is that one guy didn't murder his family so I suppose there's going to be some more leeway given to the latter.

[Dylan Waco]

Well actually I think there is a great deal of difference, but it depends on circumstance

 

2003 WWE is not 1974 NWA. The vertical suplex was not a high spot in 2003 WWE. The German suplex largely was at that point, before the rolling Germans effectively shot it between the eyes (hard to say when that was, though the RR 2003 is the match that stands out the most and that is on the very front end of the time line in question so to that extent I see your point..).

 

Three amigos was not a head dropping spot and was usually a spot done very slowly and deliberately. A reversal merely requires one guy shifting his wait, not a guy reversing from a waste lock position. I can buy the third one being countered, so long as both guys sells the impact on the back end. I'll grant that it's not an ideal spot, but there are lots of momentum swinging spots that fall under a similar category

[Frankensteiner]

The vertical suplex was never a move that was no sold in any sort of context before Guerrero implemented it into the Three Amigos spot. I don't agree with the idea that the vertical was less dangerous than the german, and such a discussion is really beside the point (two wrongs don't make a right, after all). The fact is neither should have been countered in any way after two previous ones had already been executed.

[Dylan Waco]

You don't agree that the vertical was sold as less dangerous than a German in the U.S. during that period? I literally can't fathom anyone actually believing that, but okay.

 

Anyhow I don't even necessarily disagree if your point, I just never found it terribly annoying, because I don't remember it being a spot they beat into the ground, I don't remember it being a transition spot where the counter would exist absent selling after the fact (I really have no problem with the spot in that context to be honest), and I don't see it as something that was nearly as bad as some of the transition spots that I have seen before and after that time period.

[goc]

You don't agree that the vertical was sold as less dangerous than a German in the U.S. during that period? I literally can't fathom anyone actually believing that, but okay.

 

Anyhow I don't even necessarily disagree if your point, I just never found it terribly annoying, because I don't remember it being a spot they beat into the ground, I don't remember it being a transition spot where the counter would exist absent selling after the fact (I really have no problem with the spot in that context to be honest), and I don't see it as something that was nearly as bad as some of the transition spots that I have seen before and after that time period.

Dylan if you want to point to the match where they really beat the Rolling Germans into the ground it was during the build-up to the Jericho/Benoit/Austin Triple Threat where Benoit wrestled Austin on Smackdown and I think hit him with 8 or even 9 in a row. And obviously did not win with it.

[Bix]

You don't agree that the vertical was sold as less dangerous than a German in the U.S. during that period? I literally can't fathom anyone actually believing that, but okay.

 

Anyhow I don't even necessarily disagree if your point, I just never found it terribly annoying, because I don't remember it being a spot they beat into the ground, I don't remember it being a transition spot where the counter would exist absent selling after the fact (I really have no problem with the spot in that context to be honest), and I don't see it as something that was nearly as bad as some of the transition spots that I have seen before and after that time period.

Dylan if you want to point to the match where they really beat the Rolling Germans into the ground it was during the build-up to the Jericho/Benoit/Austin Triple Threat where Benoit wrestled Austin on Smackdown and I think hit him with 8 or even 9 in a row. And obviously did not win with it.

 

It was TEN.