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My 665 favorite matches


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Man, I may call a moratorium on burning and converting awhile just so I can start examining these matches.

 

-HTQ called Tenzan-Kojima ***** awhile back but I have not seen it.

-Loss calls this ***** but I have not seen it.

-Tim keeps telling me about the greatness of a dozen plus matches, I still have not watched them.

 

 

While it would be hard pressed for me to think this match would top the best of the best from 90s All Japan it would not surprise me if it came close.

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Oh, I don't doubt that it is *****. I just have a hard time thinking it will be the best match I have ever seen. I could be wrong though.

 

Also, as for another DVD player, I could pick one up but I don't really have the space right now to set it up. I am working in a 6x6 area since my wife is slowly but surely trying to claim as much space as humanly possible while giving me MY space.

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As much I love Dick Beyer as The Destroyer, the words "Giant Baba" and "Five Stars" being in the same post just don't go together.

 

I'd really have to see the match to buy that.

Most of Baba's work from his prime holds up well, actually. He worked hard, he bumped hard, he was great at working a crowd. Yeah, some of his offense looked really light, but I consider that the *least* important part of a wrestler's game. The fact that he was able to make fans suspend their disbelief _in spite_ of the fact that he wasn't quite as explosive as some of his peers says a lot for him.
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Watched the Los Gringos Locos v Santo/Octagon tag from When Worlds Collide. Great, great match that has been discussed to death. In fact, I sometimes get annoyed when people mention it when others ask for lucha recommendations because it's such an obvious choice. But yeah, it's an outstanding match and it transcends the lucha style more than anything I've watched so far. My only complaint was that all the falls came too easily, but maybe that's just a lucha thing for pinfalls to always work on the first try - I'm not sure.

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Benoit/Guerrero from the 10/16/95 Nitro is a beautiful match as well. Just watched that one. Good God, has Benoit deteriorated! He's a total machine here. Love Eddy's hand injury, but I wish it would have played into the match in some way between the time he first injured it and when they recalled it for the finish. My second favorite B/G match at this point.

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Benoit/Guerrero from the 10/16/95 Nitro is a beautiful match as well. Just watched that one. Good God, has Benoit deteriorated! He's a total machine here. Love Eddy's hand injury, but I wish it would have played into the match in some way between the time he first injured it and when they recalled it for the finish. My second favorite B/G match at this point.

I think that's my favorite match on the Benoit DVD (the Sasuke match is better but I've watched that to death). Just one heck of a sprint. A major credit to both for jam packing so much goodness into that short time frame. Loved Benoit's vicious collection of moves (that powerbomb was almost - almost - as cool as the one Eddy delivered against Rey at Havoc '97) and any time Eddy gets to show off his selling skills, you're in for a definite treat.
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"In fact, not to take away from Baba, who was awesome here, but he could have just showed up and stood still and Destroyer could have had a match almost this amazing. The fact that he didn't makes this match even better."

 

See the 1965 Destroyer vs. Toyonobori 1 hr draw for someone showing up, doing nothing, and Destroyer having to do all the work. It is *** or so and Toyonobori isn't even as capable as Eric Watts, Ultimate Warrior, or whoever has really sucked in the past. Destroyer makes it *** all by himself.

 

Nice review Loss. I re-watched this a few weeks ago and it is high upon my list.

 

Lawler, Dundee, Eddy, Destroyer, Jim Breaks, Jumbo are my 6 favorites now.

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I have been digging everything Dundee has been doing.

 

His face work vs. Lawler in 1979 was great (and I just found out that Steve Friedlander has the COMPLETE Hair vs. Hair 1979 match that I will be getting shortly that so far I had only seen clips of).

 

His work as a face against Bobby Eaton produced such a fun match.

 

Of course the Lawler matches as they are equals to each other in the ring (Misawa/Kawada, Flair/Steamboat, Austin/Rock).

 

His promos are some of the best ever from 1985-1986 as a heel. He has a 1982 match against Lawler from a spot show in Louisville where Lawler has 2 minutes of offense and Dundee takes over, NEVER stopping. Even when he wasn't hitting a punch or move, he would stomp on Lawler's hands to keep things moving. So brilliant.

 

I have learned so much from watching this Memphis stuff that I am afraid to re-watch some other promotions for fear of disappointment.

 

BTW, my 2005 MOTY has changed and become very firm upon re-watching it on Sun.

 

Eddy v Rey Jr (6/23/05 Smackdown)

 

Dare I say it?

 

Possibly as good if not better than Havoc 97

 

*runs and hides*

 

Tim

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Guest Kilgore Trout

BTW, my 2005 MOTY has changed and become very firm upon re-watching it on Sun.

 

Eddy v Rey Jr (6/23/05 Smackdown)

 

Dare I say it?

 

Possibly as good if not better than Havoc 97

 

*runs and hides*

 

Tim

Glad to see someone else likes this as much as I do. Comparing it to HH97 is pretty hard for me but I think they're both damn near perfect for the type of match they worked. The fact that they could work two such completely different matches 8 years apart that are both so unbelievably great tells you just how good they both are, particularly Eddy who I now firmly believe to be the greatest wrestler of all time. I just wish he'd had a longer time at the top of a major promotion to show it.
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Regarding Rey-Eddy on 6/23/05, I'm not sure it's as good as HH97, but it's my WWE MOTY at the moment. I was far more into this match than I was into HBK/Angle at WM. Never saw the Angle/Jannetty SD match, so maybe that may be the only better match. I like Rey/Eddy moreso than a lot of the other MOTYCs from the WWE, such as the ones above, HBK/Shelton, among others that escape me at the moment.

 

It's hard to compare the two Rey/Eddy matches, however. Rey/Eddy worked somewhat of a similar match to Eddy/JBL at JD 04, right down to the Memphis-style brawling. Considering how long the feud actually went, they almost could've used more of a schmozz finish than what they had (like Eddy/JBL) but even then, I don't think the finish hurt the feud that badly. I really need to re-watch it again. At the time, I thought it hovered around **** and I'm definitely curious if it's around that again the second time.

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Tim, I love your assessment of Dundee. I'm glad more people are watching Memphis wrestling.

 

As for me, I just watched Dynamite Kid v Tatsumi Fujinami from 02/05/80, and it's the best Dynamite Kid match I've ever seen. That's probably because most of the other DK matches I've been have been against Tiger Mask, and I like Fujinami way more than I like Sayama. So much of the TM/DK series seems to be about highspots and gymnastics (although there are a couple of their matches I really like) while this match was more about hate and pro wrestling. Definitely my current MOTY for 1980, although really that's meaningless considering the small sample of footage I've seen from that year. Dynamite struggling to lock in the abdominal stretch and building to that for the entirety of the match is really awesome stuff.

 

Rewatched Eddy/Rey from Havoc '97 last night and enjoyed it much more than the other two times I've seen it. I thought it was underwhelming considering the hype in the past, but I love it to death now. In some ways, I still think Rey/Ultimo from World War 3 in '96 outshines this, but Rey is better here than there.

 

Also watched Eddy/Brock from NWO '04 this morning. For all the talk about the matwork in this match, there sure wasn't much of it. Still, really good with a few too many repeated sequences for my tastes, but lots of good stuff as well. Eddy's leg work on Brock is great. I wish they had done more wrestling in the final five minutes after Goldberg's spear, and I wish Brock wouldn't have sold that spear from Goldberg as long as he did, but it wasn't to be. Very good match in spite of everything, but only barely in the upper tier of Guerrero's 2004 work.

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Benoit/Guerrero from the 10/16/95 Nitro is a beautiful match as well. Just watched that one. Good God, has Benoit deteriorated! He's a total machine here. Love Eddy's hand injury, but I wish it would have played into the match in some way between the time he first injured it and when they recalled it for the finish. My second favorite B/G match at this point.

Yeah, that's the one on the Benoit set released last year. I've watched this match quite a lot in fact. Great, great match that I never get tired of seeing. What I really liked was the lack of wasted moments. Either a good, meaningful highspot hit, or the injury psychology was well worked, or both. Wonderful match between the two.
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The first two times I watched the Smackdown Eddy/Rey match, I just couldn't see it as clearly as I was able to on Sunday Night. The Smackdown match obviously has toned down spots but to make up for that, they are able to work longer and get everything out of the story as possible.

 

Eddy and Rey in the Smackdown match carry the "slower" moments via selling and facial expressions. Not that this didn't happen in the Havoc match (in fact, I don't think I have ever seen a meaner looking person in wrestling than Eddy throughout the Havoc match) but here it was really exemplified through the camera work, announcing, and the in ring storytelling.

 

I'm trying to find some way to justify putting Smackdown match above Havoc but it just isn't coming to me. There was just something about Rey's outstanding selling, Eddy's rudo job, teasing and hitting of their big moves, it was all there.

 

Havoc was all there too, so I can't argue with that one. I feel both are bonafide classics, with the second looking disappointing to the majority of people just because Rey couldn't whip out his cool as fuck 1 1/2 flip into a rana.

 

The more Memphis I watch, the more that nothing else becomes important. Eddy/Rey are the modern day Lawler/Dundee.

 

I re-watched Brock/Eddy over Labor Day Weekend. Uck. Eddy was great, but Brock was exposed. Way too many knees to the gut, typical instead of using a chinlock-use a body scissor when they essentially mean the same thing, too many fast comebacks from Brock. Vader 1993 vs. Eddy 2004 would make everyone forget this match even happened and not give a flying fuck about Brock.

 

BTW, I don't want this to spread too fast, but Vintage Memphis #1 that Will converted from Dan's tape is a perfect quality TV episode of Championship wrestling from 6/4/83.

 

So what?

 

It is the studio edition with the whole show focused around the build to Lawler/Dundee loser leaves town 6/6/83.

 

With this and the 5/83 Special Edition of Championship Wrestling featuring a roundtable discussion of the match, I think I will finally be comfortable making the Lawler/Dundee 1983 Loser Leaves Town DVD.

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BTW, my 2005 MOTY has changed and become very firm upon re-watching it on Sun.

 

Eddy v Rey Jr (6/23/05 Smackdown)

 

Dare I say it?

 

Possibly as good if not better than Havoc 97

 

*runs and hides*

 

Tim

I think the biggest poblem I have with TV matches is the commercial breaks. I like the continuity of seeing a match complete from beginning to end. While it may not be a big issue, it drives me crazy not knowing if they were in a resthold during the break, if they botched a spot or if something significant happened that helps put the match together.

 

For this reason, I would have a hard time putting the 6/05 match above the Havoc 1997 match.

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Commercial breaks are not my favourite thing too, but, while this has been said before, that match did a good job of timing them correctly, so that, for example, if Eddy tossed Rey out of the ring, and they went to commercial, Rey wouldn't be on offense when they returned, which would mean we'd be clueless how that went.

 

I understand what you mean, which is why at times I don't like rating TV matches. When I say it hovered around ****, that means what I saw was a **** match. I do feel, though, that I need to see the full match to get an idea of what happened and if things made sense. Did the offense during the commercial break make sense with respect to the story of the match? Was the flow different? How was the crowd, in comparison to the rest of the match? Things like that.

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The commercials don't bother me that much because:

 

a.) They seemed to work the match specifically around commercial breaks and did it well

 

b.) Will's editing on the DVD flowing from segment to segment is great.

 

It's old NWA matches like the MX v Fantastics TV matches where they take commercial breaks at random, even when someone is hitting a huge move that bugs me.

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Agreed on the Fantastics match, Tim. I am thinking about editing the 3/26/88 match DVD to take out the commercials. However, I don't know if it would make the match flow better. I actually got to watch most of the match last night and you knew you were watching something special... but you also knew something special was going on during the commercial break and that drove me nuts.

 

As for the SD! commercials, one match I think the editing did not hurt, but def. did not help was the recent Benoit-Regal Velocity match. It was a 13 minute match and they took 2-3 commercial breaks. While what I saw was def. nice, there is no way I would put it on my Top 10-20 list for the year because it was impossible for me to get in the flow.

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Akira Maeda v Tatsumi Fujinami 06/12/86

 

Not nearly as great as I remember it being, but still a fantastic match. Fujinami's underdog selling and Maeda's _brutal_ offense makes for a great match. I had some problems with the structure of the match at times, and I think the double TKO at the end would have been a great transition to the final stretch of the match instead of the finish itself. Maeda was on offense for most of this, which was probably for the best considering the strengths of both guys. Probably wouldn't make my top 20 or 30 matches of the 80s, but still worth seeing.

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Lioness Asuka v Chigusa Nagayo 02/26/87

 

Almost as good as Devil/Chig from 8/85, but not quite on the same level. The wrestling was almost as good, save for the giant swing being repeated at least three times, and the only other thing keeping it from reaching that level was that Masami was a strong heel, and this match was a war between friends. They deserve credit for not wrestling this as a "friendly" match, instead as a competitive match, and the problem isn't the intensity or the wrestling as much as it is that they're both total babyfaces.

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Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu v Riki Choshu & Yoshiaki Yatsu 01/28/86

 

I knew I loved this match, and was excited about rewatching it. I didn't expect it to make my top ten, though, and I certainly didn't think I'd end up calling it my personal pick for the #2 men's tag match of all time. It hit the mark, on both sides. What I think this match has over 6/9/95 is the opening few minutes, first and foremost. The early stages of the '95 match are great as well, but the work to start out is more fiery and emotional in the '86 match, so it gets the edge for me. I also find it interesting how despite the matches being nearly 10 years apart in age, they both have the same finish. GREAT doubleteam moves here -- I think Choshu/Yatsu are more impressive as a tag team than Misawa/Kobashi, although I admittedly say that with hesitation. Jumbo/Tenryu are almost on par with Kawada/Taue. Where as 6/9/95 is an extremely well-built match that builds so beautifully from one climax to the next all the way throughout, this match is a 30-minute plus balls-to-the-wall sprint that admittedly probably has a less smooth flow to it, but grabs the viewer early on and refuses to let him go. I also find it slightly more impressive that guys are working at the level displayed here in 1986 than in 1995, if only because this match stands out far more in the context of its time. I love wrestling.

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