Poll: Favorite match in the Tiger Mask vs Dynamite Kid series?

[SPS]

Hello all, I was rewatching this feud the last day or so in my spare time on World(although the 05.08.1982 match is the only one missing from NJPW World for some reason so I had to find it on dailymotion since I don't have my DVDs with me).

 

After rewatching them all for the first time in many years I thought I'd ask some of folks here which one they enjoyed the most from this fondly remembered series?

 

I know that online years later the whole series was debated and picked apart and all it's flaws discussed and I'm sure some here don't hold the matches as fondly as the popular opinion but myself even watching these back with those criticisms still enjoyed them and thought they still hold up for what they were and what they meant to me as a fan discovering Japanese wrestling.

 

So to sum it up for those here which of the matches did you personally enjoy most after all these years? Myself upon rewatch I still think the 05.08.1982 match is the best one personally of the series and enjoyed it the most. It was kept pretty intense and well balanced and wasn't as wild with the crazy counters and reversals being too contrived. the crowd was also pretty hot and the finish was clean and well executed by Tiger Mask.

 

What are your picks and thoughts about this series? Please vote and comment on what you think about it.

[NintendoLogic]

I don't have much interest in revisiting these matches, but my recollection was that 8/5/82 was clearly their best match together. As for the series as a whole, I agree with a lot of the criticisms about them not really holding up that well, but I also think that some of them miss the mark. It wasn't just the highspots that made the series revolutionary. It was also the pacing and structure. People can point to something like Hamada/Babyface and say that the spots were cleaner and more impressive, but it's mostly a conventional mat-based match with the spots serving mainly to break up the matwork. With TM/DK, the reverse is true. The spots are the meat of the match with the matwork serving mainly to set up the next series of spots. You'd be hard-pressed to find matches prior to this series worked in that vein.

[PeteF3]

Agree on 8/5/82. I don't doubt their tangible influence and don't at all see the idea that Gran Hamada would have been "better" in the role--he didn't have Tiger Mask's star power. He was basically a novelty worker--a great one, but an oddly-built, funny-old-man novelty worker, even when he wasn't old.

 

That all said, the rest of the TM/DK series range from interesting to actively terrible (the first and especially the final match, climaxing with the least-exciting bottle-breaking in the history of fiction). *That* said, the worst TM/DK match is still better than the best Takada/Koshinaka match.

[fxnj]

I went with 8/5/82 pretty much for what was said about it being the best showcase of both guys' skills and their dynamic. I do think recent-ish criticism has focused way too much on the spots without giving proper credit to the story underlying the spots. Sure, you can point to Fujinami and Hamada matches that had similar spots to what Tiger Mask did, but that misses the explosiveness and sense of unpredictability with which he executed those spots. I think it was that aura of Tiger Mask of someone who was a freakish athlete almost resembling an animal more than a man that really makes the matches stand out more than just the stunts they did. Dynamite Kid was a great opponent for Tiger Mask for how he was a great athlete who, though clearly a step behind Tiger, had the viciousness and willpower to make up for his shortcomings. Last I watched them, I remember the matches didn't even feature a whole lot of big spots and it was mostly filled hard-fought matwork and rough brawling.

[DGinnetty]

8/5/82 for me.

Kid finally get a his top rope headbutt, after failing in the prior 4 matches.

 

2 3/4 count.

 

Crowd goes berserk, and the cameraman zooms in on Kid's face.

 

Kid is despondent that his finisher didn't get the job done.

 

8/30/82 is a short "greatest hits" match for an unfamiliar crowd; jamming in all the highspots without any real story.

 

8/5/82

 

Dan

[DR Ackermann]

Agree on 8/5/82. I don't doubt their tangible influence and don't at all see the idea that Gran Hamada would have been "better" in the role--he didn't have Tiger Mask's star power. He was basically a novelty worker--a great one, but an oddly-built, funny-old-man novelty worker, even when he wasn't old.

 

That all said, the rest of the TM/DK series range from interesting to actively terrible (the first and especially the final match, climaxing with the least-exciting bottle-breaking in the history of fiction). *That* said, the worst TM/DK match is still better than the best Takada/Koshinaka match.

Damn, I'm no big fan of Koshinaka or Takada and think both can be actively bad. But something clicked for me when they fought each other. I remember being really surprised by how much I liked their feud.

[joeg]

I feel like I'm one of the few people around these parts that is still a big fan of this series. I don't know when or why it became cool to shit on Tiger Mask or Tiger Mask vs Dynamite Kid. 20 years ago it was the the gold standard, now its very en vogue to criticize these matches. Every singles match in the series is at least fun. Most of the tags and 6 mans in the series are fun also. 8/5/82 is a great culmination of the 3 or 4 previous matches building up to one of my personal favorite nearfalls and a borderline classic. 4/21/83 is a hell of a brawl with a cool broken bottle spot and a really hot crowd. It too is a borderline classic.

 

It seems to me that sometime in the past decade it became cool to say that established classics weren't all that great. It became cool to pick apart the Tiger Mask vs Dynamite Kid series or the Misawa vs Kobashi series. What bothers me the most about the hate hurdled at TM/DK is that the people who tear apart these matches are the often same people who hype sloppy, sleazy indy matches for their grittiness or innovation.

[PeteF3]

The Other Arena guys were shitting on it back in the late '90s and I'm personally about the least indy fan on this board, maybe because it's so similar to the stuff I don't like about the series.

[KB8]

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.

[Edwin]

I'm one of the few who saw this years after I got into Japanese pro-wres. I had been following Japanese pro-wres. for about 5-6 years before I actually got to watch this. I was a big fan of these back then when I was younger.

 

Rewatching this series today and tomorrow. I'm up to 7/23/1982 and it's the second best out of the bunch so far with 1/28/1982 being better imo. The first two really did nothing for me.

 

There was a six man 2/3 falls match in there with Dynamite Kid teaming up with Abdullah the Butcher and Baby Face vs. Tiger Mask teaming up with Antonio Inoki and Tatsumi Fujinami that is quite great.

 

I'll bump this up tomorrow again once I finish the remaining matches.

[ohtani's jacket]

I also went with 8/5/82. Criticism of the series is old. It's like flogging a dead horse.