Goodhelmet's 2006 MOTY set

[Loss]

Still plan on responding, but I am in the middle of buying a home at the moment and it's taking a lot of my time.

 

The main point I want to make regarding Cage of Death now, while I have time, is that I agree that it was a great match, but the cage was ultimately meaningless. Danielson left on his own free will. Joe was injured and taken out. Homicide entered halfway through on his own free will. The whole point of War Games (or COD, as the case may be) has always been to keep other people from getting in or out. The 6-man was more of an unsanctioned all-over-the-arena brawl that seemed to fit what it was trying to accomplish more.

[goodhelmet]

I have never looked at the COD that way but it is a completely valid point. I don't know if I would enjoy it as much the next time around with that on my mind.

[Dylan Waco]

I agree that the COD criticism is valid, though it doesn't really bother me and probably won't hurt the enjoyment for me at all because the collection of "stuff" going on was really good and the whole thing was as much "great series of angles" as it was "great match" and that goes beyond any gimmick.

 

Also..I really like chaotic tag brawls. To this day there are ECW clusterfucks and even some really "bad" TNA brawls that I get alot of enjoyment out of when the whole "fighting through the crowd, wild uncontrable" thing is done. the April ROH six man was a good match of that ilk, featuring better work and workers than nearly any other matches of that style. But honestly I am not sure I enjoyed it nearly as much as I enjoyed total shitball clusterfucks like Raven/Bruise Brothers v. Douglas/Dreamer/Sandman and for that reason I couldn't even really consider it for MOTY, much less something surperior to COD

[gordi]

I skipped ahead to disc 5 yesterday, mostly so that I could write my own opinions without at the same time responding to Loss' opinions of the matches on the set:

 

Goodhelmet's Best of 2006: Disc 5 - Part 1

 

Naomichi Marufuji v. Akira Taue (NOAH 3/5/06)

 

This is a great match-up because each guy's weaknesses get turned into strengths when they face each other... because "Big awkward old guy who hits hard and throws people around by their throats vs. Spry and bouncy smaller guy who tries to do too much all of the time" lends itself to being a good story to base a match on... So, when they face each other, it's good that Taue is old and awkward and it's good that Maufuji is bouncy and prone to doing too many fancy-Dan moves.

 

They fight this exactly the way they should: Taue is all big and plodding and at one point he just grabs Marufuji by the throat and hurls him into the ring post. Maru is all young and quick and literally flipping out of trouble. They lose the thread very briefly during their shoot style interlude, as Taue very slowly applies a loose-looking version of a triangle choke... but mercifully they stop trying to be MMA fighters and get back to being pro wrestlers pretty quickly.

 

The highlight of Marufuji's many little flurries of come-back offense is a brutal-looking cross-arm German suplex.

 

The finish plays beautifully into all the pro wrestling fun that built up to it. Will it be Taue's brute strength or Marufuji's explosive quickness that wins the day? That's the question they need to answer... and they do!

 

I loved all three of the old guard vs. young lions single matches on the 3/5/06 NOAH card. Misawa vs. Morishima was my personal favourite, but I'm a total Misawa mark. KENTA vs. Kenta may have been the most exciting, and Taue vs. Marufuji probably told the best story, I could see how any one of the three could be considered the best on a given day.

 

Meiko Satomura v. Aja Kong (Sendai Pro Wrestling 7/9/06)

 

Not unlike La Mascara & El Hijo Del Santo vs. Blue Panther & Tarzan Boy this is a match that deserved to make the set on nostalgia value alone. They may not be two of the ten greatest matches on the set, but they are two of the matches that I most wanted to see, and two of the reasons that goodhelmet is living high off of my money these days.

 

Not unlike Taue vs. Morishima, this is a big, awkward, hard-hitting old star vs. a fast-moving, flippity younger star. It also reminded me somewhat of a Vader vs. Sting match, in part because Kong's thighs are at least as big as Vader's here, and in part because Satomura, while much smaller than Kong, looks explosive enough that it's believable when she knocks Kong down.

 

The excellent in this: Kong still hits hard enough that I was legit worried for Satomura, and Kong sells so well that at times I was legit worried for Kong.

 

The good in this: Satomura does the Arn-style "constantly going back to the arm" stuff and Kong's selling of it more than makes up for the fact that it ultimately leads nowhere.

 

The less than excellent in this: They kind of meander through their big moves in the middle of the match.

 

I'm not sure if three Death Valley Drivers in one match is always two too many. I kind of thought it worked, here.

 

This is probably the worst Aja Kong match in my collection... but that's kind of like saying that Symphony # 4 is Beethoven's worst symphony.

[gordi]

Goodhelmet's Best of 2006: Disc 5 - Part 2

 

KENTA v. Matt Sydal (ROH 11/4/06)

 

Who would have thought that out of Satomura, Marufuji, and Sydal, that it would be Sydal who turned in the best underdog performance on this disc so far?

 

The crowd chants loudly for KENTA (and politely for Sydal) as the fighters are introduced, but it doesn't take long for Sydal to win the crowd over completely to his side, as he just eats sick kicks and suplexes from KENTA and keeps coming back for more. It's almost as if, if Sydal grew a mullet and wore some do-rags on his boots... but, nah...

 

But... yeah... Sydal has a way, in this match, of looking like he's finished just before he comes back to life with yet another counter. This reaches it's apogee when KENTA has him up for the Go To Sleep, and Sydal is limp across KENTA's shoulders... but the moment KENTA drops him, Sydal springs into action, catching KENTA with a Dragon-Kid-like snap rana that brings the crowd to their feet.

 

The outcome is never in doubt, but that doesn't mean that the match lacks for drama.

 

The post-match angle is very entertaining, as well.

 

Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle (Turning Point 12/10/06)

 

So, the build-up to this match was tremendous, and Joe and Angle just lay into each other (The match doesn't look all that super-stiff after watching NOAH and Aja and so forth... but I'd guess this is about as tight a bout as TNA had in '06). The crowd is molten... but I'm having trouble getting into it.

 

Here's my problem: If I understand correctly, Tenay is the play by play guy and West is the colour man. One of them, I assume Tenay, actaully talks about what's going on in the ring and the feud and he seems to have a decent grip on what his role is. The other one, I'm assuming West, yells and spits and froths and over-exaggerates everything all the time.

 

So it goes like this: TNA wrestler A hits a suplex. Tenay (?) says: That was a really good suplex, he landed right on his head. That's got to hurt (or something along those lines). I'm wacthing on DVD, and I'm starting to thin, "Yeah, that must have hurt..." but then West (?) Starts screaming and drooling: THAT WAS THE SICKEST SUPLEX THAT"S EVER BEEN THROWN!!!! I'VE NEVER EVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THAT EVER BEFORE!!!! and instead of thinking "That must have hurt!" I'm thinking "I've seen sicker suplexes than that," and the moment is all ruined for me. I can't tune the guy out, and I don't want to watch the match with the sound off because I like to hear the ring shake and the chops echo off the walls.

 

This keeps happening throughout the Angle vs. Joe match. It's a good match, but every time that West (?) bellows that it's the greatest match he's ever seen, or that we've never seen anything like this before, I mentally react against it. He takes me right out of the match, and so the match has no natural ebb and flow for me.

 

Unlike a lot of people, I very much enjoy the idiotic "Look at me!" TNA crowd. They seem to be having fun, and for whatever reason I can tune them out far more easily than I can the screaming colour commentator. They're really hot for this match, and that's helping to keep me into it.

 

Then... in the most egregious recent example of dumb TNA booking that I can think of: There is a pointless and unnecessary ref bump. The crowd actually starts booing. Good for you, TNA crowd! I take back what I said earlier about you being idiots. You know your stuff, to a certain extent.

 

The crowd is totally deflated, and the win that would have blown the roof off of the place ends up getting only a decent response. It sincerely makes no sense at all, particularly considering that the ref bump didn't actually figure into the finish. Were they trying to swerve their fans? Their fans apparently don't like being swerved!

 

This might have been a damn good match, but all I'm left with is a sense of bad announcing and worse booking.

 

The million reversals spot might be getting kind of played out now, as well. Maybe Angle needs to come up with another way to end a big match once in a while.

[Dylan Waco]

I actually find West to be generally likeable as he is enthusiastic in a way that isn't rivaled and I'm also not entirely sure that he realizes what he's calling isn't real.

 

Also that Taue/Maru match is really, really great. Rewatched it last week and was amazed by the fact that it lost nothing. The Taue sunset flip spot is still maybe my favorite "simple" spot all year last year and I really think a person could make a case that he is one of the top five "big match" wrestlers of this decade.

[gordi]

I actually find West to be generally likeable as he is enthusiastic in a way that isn't rivaled and I'm also not entirely sure that he realizes what he's calling isn't real.

 

Also that Taue/Maru match is really, really great. Rewatched it last week and was amazed by the fact that it lost nothing. The Taue sunset flip spot is still maybe my favorite "simple" spot all year last year and I really think a person could make a case that he is one of the top five "big match" wrestlers of this decade.

 

 

"Likable" is not an adjective I'd ever imagined I'd hear applied to West. Different strokes, I guess. I find him to be constantly over-enthusiastic in a way that makes me feel he's trying to compensate for the fact that what he's calling "isn't real." It genuinely draws me out of the moment far too often.

 

I can easily believe that Taue vs. Marufuji stands up to repeat viewing. I've watched Misawa vs. Morishima a couple of times, and it doesn't lose anything to familiarity, either.

[Jingus]

LAX v Christopher Daniels & AJ Styles - TNA Hard Justice 08/13/06

Not really all that good a match for me at all, although the matching tights from Styles and Daniels are cute, and Hernandez looks really great. Anyone make any recommendations for some good matches from him worth tracking down?

I could recommend a few Wildside and Texas matches where Hernandez fucks a bunch of stuff up and injures people. But as for good, no. He really never did anything that even remotely impressed me until his LAX run.

 

The main point I want to make regarding Cage of Death now, while I have time, is that I agree that it was a great match, but the cage was ultimately meaningless. Danielson left on his own free will. Joe was injured and taken out. Homicide entered halfway through on his own free will. The whole point of War Games (or COD, as the case may be) has always been to keep other people from getting in or out.

Yeah, I noticed that too. I heard about this match being hyped to the fuckin' moon, and when I finally saw it, it's like, "uh, that's all?". I'm sure it came off much better live with all the plot twists and such, but ROH booking often seems like Gabe is trying to copy great bookers of the past rather than being a great booker himself. I did like that at least they didn't slavishly follow the one Wargames formula with the heels winning the coin toss.

 

Here's my problem: If I understand correctly, Tenay is the play by play guy and West is the colour man. One of them, I assume Tenay, actaully talks about what's going on in the ring and the feud and he seems to have a decent grip on what his role is. The other one, I'm assuming West, yells and spits and froths and over-exaggerates everything all the time.

 

So it goes like this: TNA wrestler A hits a suplex. Tenay (?) says: That was a really good suplex, he landed right on his head. That's got to hurt (or something along those lines). I'm wacthing on DVD, and I'm starting to thin, "Yeah, that must have hurt..." but then West (?) Starts screaming and drooling: THAT WAS THE SICKEST SUPLEX THAT"S EVER BEEN THROWN!!!! I'VE NEVER EVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THAT EVER BEFORE!!!! and instead of thinking "That must have hurt!" I'm thinking "I've seen sicker suplexes than that," and the moment is all ruined for me. I can't tune the guy out, and I don't want to watch the match with the sound off because I like to hear the ring shake and the chops echo off the walls.

Welcome to the strangest commentary team in da biz. Tenay was the guy they brought in for the luchadore and cruiserweight matches in WCW, because unlike Schiavone he'd actually watched a fucking foreign wrestling show before and actually knew that particular move was NOT a sidewalk slam. Since he was stuck in the political snakepit of WCW, with color commentators like Dusty, Madden, Zybysco, and Drunk Apathetic Heenan constantly yelling in his ear and insulting him, he developed a no-heat commentary style where he never really interacted that much with the other announcers, as much as possible.

 

So, here's TNA, and in the beginning there were two announcers: Tenay and Ed Ferrera. Ferrera was decent, a nice enough guy when he wasn't mocking Jim Ross's bells palsy, but he tended to try to put himself over too much and was generally too Russoesque in his manner (he didn't last very long). So the Jarretts decided they needed another color guy, a hype man if you will. Well, one of them was watching ShopAtHome one night, and saw Don West on there, shilling baseball cards at ear-splitting volume. The rest is history. West knows next to nothing about the history or more subtle intracacies of the business, but he delivers sheer enthusiasm in ludicrous quantities. During one six-man SATs match where Red got his ass kicked for twenty minutes straight, West actually stood on top of the announce desk and led the crowd in a "Go Red Go!" chant. Some are amused by his ridiculous energy, some like gordi are just annoyed by it.

 

 

 

Anyone else continuing with these match reviews?

[World's Worst Man]

Abdullah Kobayashi vs. Takashi Sasaki (BJPW 3/31/06) - Earlier someone said this was like a meeting of Honma vs. Yamakawa style deathmatches with more modern overkill BJPW deathmatches, and I couldn't agree more. They worked in some wrestling around the gimmickry, and actually had a solid story going on throughout the match. These two aren't as good as Honma or Yamakawa though, so the wrestling portions weren't as long, or worked as well. The story was basically Sasaki taking a huge beating, and whether or not he could come back from it. It built pretty well, as Sasaki's beating was long and drawn out, and his selling was fantastic. Kobayashi was just kind of there. He handed out a beating, but didn't add much more on top of that. If Sasaki had a better opponent, the wrestling sequences could have been a bigger and better part of the match, along with maybe a bit more dramatics along the way. Anyway, still one of the better deathmatches I've seen.