Has it passed me by?

[MoS]

Also, I have always preferred Bret-Bam Bam from KotR 1993 to Bret-Perfect

[fxnj]

19 hours ago, dawho5 said:

I watched the highlights of the Cody vs. A.J. match and KNEW that wrestling had passed me by.  They managed to take an I Quit match and kill the concept.  It was everything bad about ECW plus everything bad about modern WWE.

Every Kenny Omega/Bucks match I have ever seen looks like what would have been called a "spotfest" or "your turn/my turn" back when I was watching consistently in the 90s through late 2010s.

I put down 10 bucks for Dragon Gate to watch what they were doing and it seems like they are less lucharesu and more NJPW juniors lite, with the standard elbow exchange that 99% of the workers using it besides the 5 Pillars get wrong.  The whole idea was not that you should stand there and elbow each other to fill time.  It was that Misawa had a killer elbow and would try to lure his rivals into giving him some extra damage while he was on the wrong side of things.  If you're not Misawa or you aren't known for throwing killer elbows, you shouldn't be doing it.  Especially if you are the small guy in a match.

I'm also not a fan of the direction things have taken. I can get into an Omega or Ospreay circus show every now and then, but it's not the kind of wrestling I'd like to watch every day. Mutoha and similar Japanese microindy stuff seems the most reliable for the kind of stuff I like, but I still don't really find it as blow away great as its fans hype it to be.

[MJH]

Walter vs. Ilya Dragunov (NXT UK - October 29, 2020)

This is my first time seeing either man although I've heard a lot about Walter. 

I thought "oh no" when they blew off an early sleeper suplex, but once they settled into it, I thought this was pretty damn brilliant. I wonder how it would have felt with a crowd, but I think the only audio being the striking actually enhanced the brutality of it all. I especially liked how they kept up the fight during Ilya's main comeback, with Walter getting shots in, and how the finish was just Walter turning it up to 11 to kill him dead.

I think some of Ilya's spots were a bit too spinny and his selling sometimes a bit too performative, and it probably would have benefitted from being five minutes shorter. With the lack of crowd, it would have been even more glaring, but I really think they did a far, far better job at selling what they were doing than any of the other modern matches I've seen.

The only other negatives were the camerawork (way too busy), and some truly awful commentary. It hurt the viewing experience, but I can't hold it against them. 

[MJH]

Bryan Danielson vs. MJF (Iron Man Match: AEW Revolution 2023)

I watched the first twenty-five minutes. It made a bad first impression and never got me back.

I've seen MJF before, not in matches I don't think, but in interview segments. He struck me as somebody trying much too hard. He came out in a mask and did some weird gurn to the hard camera. 

Anyway, as to the match. It just felt like guys doing stuff.

Danielson opens the match by twisting MJF into a few holds and I'm thinking, OK, this makes sense, Danielson is the better mat wrestler... and then they go into a stand-off sequence. For what? The commentators try to sell it as MJF "proving himself" (five minutes in?), and he then goes into a stall.

MJF then works over Danielson's arm/shoulder for several minutes and there's one really cool spot where Danielson works a dive as a hope spot and MJF guides him into the rail on the catch. 

Coming out of that, they go back and forth for a bit, and then MJF tweaks his knee on a quebrada. I thought this was going to be another Danielson Accidental Injury, but a moment later, MJF drops Danielson on his head with some tucked version of a Michinoku Driver that the commentators put over as a big spot. And then Bryan is right back up and they go into a full two minutes of cradle counters. 

At that point (35 remaining) I was just completely lost, and turned it off. There was some other stuff they did that I haven't mentioned, but the main point is that nothing registered with me. 

I have no idea what they were actually doing here. None of the matches I've watched have confused me nearly as much. Even when Ospreay doesn't make sense, it still makes sense as a great athlete doing impressive gymnastic spots for pops. This just made no sense to me at all. 

[MJH]

I edited my earlier post rather than making a new one about Danielson/MJF. If anyone can shed some light on what that match was doing, it would be appreciated. They were not speaking my language.

[Matt D]

1 hour ago, MJH said:

I edited my earlier post rather than making a new one about Danielson/MJF. If anyone can shed some light on what that match was doing, it would be appreciated. They were not speaking my language.

Here was my review if it helps: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/03/aew-five-fingers-of-death-and-friends.html?m=0

[fxnj]

Nice that I'm not the only one who hated that stand-off they did. 

[MJH]

Tenryu/Kawada vs. Hansen/Gordy (RWTL 1988)

I was thinking before I put this on that it's easilly twenty years since I watched it.

(And a brief note to start: the half-and-half canvas that All Japan had at the time.is easily my favourite of all time.)

But no, this holds up very well. Structurally, it's not a match you can do every week - the three-part "southern tag" formula is the standard for a reason - but the simple two-part formula suits the situation perfectly.

It's Hansen who really stands out for me. Gordy was a phenomenal athlete, and everything he did looked great, and Tenryu looked less awkward than he's often seemed to me. But what makes Hansen work is he doesn't follow the steps. A guy throwing a punch will bring his arm all the way back, there's a pause, then it comes forward with a stomp. A guy will raise his leg for a stomp, there again is that pause, and then he brings his foot down while the other leg stomps for the noise. Hansen just does all of these little kicks and jabs, he's always in so close. He somehow manages to still be a very visual wrestler but it's absolutely not how the textbook draws it up. But what it does do, to go back to a point I know I've been harping on about here, is make everything look much more real. And the mask never slips for a second.

Back and forth can work, but it has to be a set up for the key spot. And once Hansen kicks Kawada's leg out on the German and lariats Tenryu off the apron, the match is effectively over. The first part of the match is quite back and forth without establishing much more than their respective roles. But the fact that Tenryu never really stands a chance after the switch is precisely what makes the earlier section work. 

[Blehschmidt]

Maybe Bryan Danielson vs Zack Sabre Jr would be more your style when it comes to AEW?

[KawadaSmile]

I'm legit curious about your thoughts on Sami Zayn vs Johnny Knoxville, which is honestly the world's biggest, dumbest bullshit match ever.

[MJH]

Bryan Danielson vs. Zach Sabre Jr (AEW WrestleDream 2023)

This is my first time watching Zach Sabre Jr. I'd heard about him before, but, of all the contemporary wrestlers I've heard about, he was the one I was most apprehensive about watching. My understanding was, as he's "a British wrestler", he's representing something that hasn't existed in any meaningful form since the 1980s and, as such, there's a great level of artifice there. But, actually, I didn't get any feeling of the cosplaying that I was expecting (read: dreading). He actually seems to have simply taken some elements but adapted them to fit this modern style of wrestling.

Of a greater issue for me was his selling. He seems to have no body language at all. There were times when he was taking shots from Bryan and I wasn't sure if he was playing possum, grinning and bearing it, or getting beaten up. He was just sat there. 

There were elements here, individual spots, that I really liked. Some of the transitions which may have otherwise looked hokey were super-tight and actually worked. Many, in fact. But I can't say I connected with any kind of story. There was some technical machismo mano-a-mano stuff going on, and then Zach plays Bryan into using his injured right arm, but there's maybe two minutes of Zach attacking it before Bryan does the Lance Storm rolling crab and it's back to being back-and-forth. 

Part of the issue I'm having with these AEW matches is, I'm expecting them to go a certain way and suddenly I'm some place else, and before I've found out what this place is, then they're somewhere else again. I'm not feeling the momentum. With the matches I've liked, and I'm including the Walter/Dragunov match in that list, I know what's happening. I know who's on top, I know who's got the momentum, I know where I am. 

Like, genuinely, what was the story here? Where was the drama? I'm confident in saying that Bryan was the face and I'm rooting for him, but what did he actually go through here? When was he in peril? There were times when Zach had him tied up, yes, but whatever coherency others might see, I just don't. This is wrestling, it should be simple. I shouldn't be this confused.      

[dawho5]

I watched that Walter vs. Dragunov match.  Dragunov's selling was way over the top, but it kind of made sense.  As AJPW cosplay goes, sure.  As far as killing your own body for the enjoyment of...no crowd...WTF?  These guys are great at what they do, it's just that there are better ways.