October 2008

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WWE Women's Champion Beth Phoenix vs Candice Michelle - WWE No Mercy 2008 I watched this on a whim and it rocked! Yep, that's right it rocked! No sliding scale, this was legitimately good. I bet Stacey (Jimmy Redman) has already sung this match's praises. I was a pretty big Glamarella mark as it is my favorite style of comedy and Beth was my favorite women's wrestler along with Mickie James, but I think Mickie was already being phased out. This match is built around the fact that Beth injured Candice's shoulder. Beth taunts Candice right at the beginning by trying to touch the shoulder and Candice dropkicks her knee. It was a rapid fire shine. Where Candice was…

Chris Jericho defends the World Heavyweight Title. Talk about it here.

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WWE Champion Tripe H vs Jeff Hardy - No Mercy 2008 I got into it a little with Dave Meltzer on Twitter recently. Nothing too extreme maybe three tweets each traded back and forth about how classic wrestling is timeless. He believes that today's wrestling far outstrips yesterday's wrestling and most five star matches of yesteryear would be more like ****. As a staunch fan of the years gone by, I took great umbrage with this. He made the point the evolution is natural and today's wrestlers have learnt then refine on their predecessor's work. My point was a lot of today's wrestlers only picked up bits and pieces and more often than not are missing that connective tissue…

Kurt Angle vs Jeff Jarrett - TNA Bound For Glory 2008 Jeff Jarrett is returning after a two year absence due to his wife losing her battle with cancer. They made this match very personal with Angle bringing up Jarrett's three daughters and Jarrett saying his daughters are his source of strength when he thought he would have none. Pretty heavy stuff. Basic opening to the match. Angle dominates early showing Jarrett's ring rust. They give Jarrett a little bit of shine with a dropkick and knocking Angle over the top rope. Jarrett eats steel off the apron, but that does not really go anywhere as Jarrett is hits signature stradle and then Fargo Strut. They are givin…

I was doing my usual wandering around on YT and I amazingly found a uber lost First Tiger Mask match out of literally nowhere: turns out Kazushi Miyamoto's super based and sticks up the occasional rare match here and there, including this. Cagematch and other resources to my recollection has no record of such a event happening, but it did! It's a fascinating matchup knowing the young opponents here go on to become crazy deathmatch guys, but here they are just mostly featureless guys jobbing to the vets right next to a lovely seaside view. This match is pretty basic. Hamada still moves well and Sayama still kicks hard, go figure. Takeda bumps like a god for Tiger Mas…

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I really liked the old-school late 1970's feel to the hybridized style of BattlARTS, with Nagai playing the mean surly veteran and laying it into the spunky Sawa. Classic psychology and showmanship combined with stiff kicks and submission attempts. Sawa hangs with him awhile on the mat before Nagai takes over, working him with hard kicks and leg holds. While Sawa's in-the-moment selling is good, Nagai's grunting and yelling as he exerts more pressure on the holds really gets the crowd behind Sawa's eventual escapes. Great escalation of back half with tons of nasty strikes and suplexes and by the end of it, that total exhaustion factor that plays so well into many BattlART…

Yuki Ishikawa vs Super Tiger II - BattlArts 10/25/08 As I have become more accustomed to the work of Ishikawa, the more I realize how much he likes to work underneath. He is up there with Flair and Kawada in terms of selling the general fatigue of battle. He has a hard time on the mat from what I can tell. He does not really sell the holds offensively or defensively. I feel like he gives up on holds too readily and when in a hold does not do much to convey the pain he is in. Still, in terms of stand up fighting, there are very few better. He dishes out as good as he gets. It is amazing how hard he hits and how hard he is hit. His selling of exhaustion and his striking…

Really solid undercard that I enjoyed also because they mixed things up a bit instead of the usual "everyone gets their shit in, brawl, leave" standard six-man stuff. Ogawa backdrops Genba Hirayanagi on the outside early because he tries interfering on behalf of his staple mates and Ogawa's just trying to enjoy the match, so he has insta-heat with both his tag partners from the get go as that's Kanemaru's boy and he also slaps the shit out of Suzuki when he complains about it. Match itself gets a little bit cute in places (like Suzuki and Aoki do this really contrived starting sequence where they are just going from bit to bit with next to no struggle, that's always lame)…

A fun mess. Match starts out with Nakajima and Marvin, and while you may expect them to do some contrived junior sequences they instead proceed to just slap the taste out of each other's mouth, setting the pace and the heat for the match. And it's not like it was hard for them to sustain that-you get Ibushi pinballing for Misawa, Misawa and Kensuke slugging it out, Kensuke destroying juniors, all intriguing ideas that were executed well (I loved MIsawa saying fuck it mid-strike exchange with Kensuke and tagging out). Misawa is at his most Giant Baba-ish here, at the end of the match he can't even run halfway across the ring, but anyone other than Kensuke that gets close t…

Talk about it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCjZXiHVVWw

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