Childs
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Everything posted by Childs
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I imagine Chono would have been surprised to hear that Hase was the leader of their team, as Ross claimed. Not that it mattered. I don't know about "realistic," but the match was a heck of an adrenaline shot. The crowd was way into it, demonstrating that all-action was the right path for the NJPW import matches. And frankly, the Steiners were better off without a lot of time.
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Jesus that was short for a loser leaves town match from your promotion's best in-ring feud of the last two months. The action was hot. I loved the spot where Pillman jumped off Gigante's shoulders. And of course, fucking WCW missed the brutal kick that put Pillman down, only showing it on replay. Aside from the wrestlers themselves, this promotion was such fucking amateur hour. Honestly, if they had gone out of business, the fate would have been well-deserved.
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This lacked the hatred of their 5/31 match and the "big" feeling of their 4/30 match. But it was still good, with Liger reeling off all his offense to get his win back. Even without the nastiness, this felt less exhibitiony than some of Liger's other stuff from the period. Between this feud, the Owen match and the Nogami dome match, Liger has been more consistent in 1991 than he was in 1990.
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And we see how much better this match got with Pillman in place of Big Josh. No shock there. Actually, Flair and Eaton picked up the intensity as well. Their chop vs. punch exchanges looked absolutely vicious. The '90 and '91 yearbooks have enhanced my love for Bobby Eaton but have also made me sad that he never got a significant singles run in a healthy promotion. He had the tools to be a top-20-all-time guy.
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Davis delivered a spirited performance here as the midcarder getting his shot and Embry did a nice job of treating him as a greater and greater threat throughout the match. Pete's right about Embry resorting to some cliched Memphis heel stuff, but he didn't make that the whole focus of his performance. And his offense looked great once he got down to winning time. Very good match.
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I can't logically criticize any of what they did. The powder and the attire were smart ways to set this apart from your typical Hogan match. And Slaughter did everything he could to put over the match, from his selling to the heavy blade job. But I did not connect to the match for whatever reason. Maybe it's my distaste for the angle. Maybe it's that Hogan lacked the athletic crispness to be a dynamic brawler. I don't know. I just didn't care about what I was watching.
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I liked this way more than Loss. Hot opening as Doc tried to steamroll Kawada only for Kawada to counter and hit an early power bomb for a nearfall. Then Doc came back with an Oklahoma Stampede on the floor, which looked nasty. I could see finding Doc's offense a bit bland in the middle of the match. No doubt he got a ton better over the next two years. But I had no big issue with his performance. He sold appropriately for Kawada, who turned in another strong effort with his counter kicks, lariat to the back, etc. This was in no way on the level of their '94 stuff, but it was an entertaining match that paired well with Misawa vs. Gordy.
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Because they mapped it out in the morning and realized everything didn't fit.
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I don't buy that the show fell flat because all three big matches were the same. Taker-Punk pretty clearly did not fall flat, in part because they made the effort to create distinctive moments -- Punk being a wiseass about Taker's mystique, the table spot, the urn nearfall -- instead of just kicking out of four tombstone and five GTS's. If you want to say they sold poorly at times or got too cute with the finisher reversals, I won't argue. But that match did not strike me as mindless finisher-fu. HHH-Lesnar featured a fine on-paper layout. It was your basic physically overmatched guy fights through a terrible beating to save his career. Unfortunately, it was predicated on HHH delivering a performance of which he's incapable. He's compelling neither as a guy standing toe-to-toe with Lesnar nor as a gutsy babyface with an unbreakable connection to the crowd. The failing of that match was not a ridiculous excess of finishers (though I'd have edited out one of the kimura counters) but one guy's delusions of greatness. Rock-Cena was the match that best fits SLL's criticism. They wrestled a formless opening, seemed to agree they were devoid of ideas and then went to the endless finishers, reversals, thefts of the other guy's finisher, etc. The only moment I liked down the stretch was Cena being a d-bag about the people's elbow. Otherwise, it was clearly WWE epic run amok. So yeah, I agree that the show fell flat when it was supposed to climax. I think it was probably a mistake to run those three matches in a row without some short, energetic stuff interspersed. But I didn't see them as three faces of the same problem.
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They worked hard to have a great match and yet, it didn't feel special in the way the much-talked-about Cena turn would have. I don't think these guys have a great match in them, honestly. Overall, a middle-of-the-road Mania. First hour was enjoyable. Cena-Taker was an easy MOTN. And the last hour plus didn't quite pop.
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This has actually been a very "wrestling" show. Not a ton to distract from the matches compared to some of the other Manias.
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Lesnar is pretty great as a special attraction guy. All those suplexes looked awesome. The idea that HHH could compete with him seemed pretty comical. Would've been nice to see more intense brawling. I was fantasizing about Lesnar against a prime Stan Hansen. I don't know. The match was fairly well designed, but the result, as much as it was expected, left a bad taste.
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For all your Henrys and Rybacks and whomevers, Lesnar is definitely the scariest looking dude on this show.
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Lot of time left for only two big matches. Taker sold perfectly well for Punk. Given the context, I'm not sure that match could have been much better.
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Really enjoyed Punk juggling the urn and then playing stick and move early. And how can you not pop for him countering old school and then doing it himself? Whole match was well put together, though I'm not sure the Punk elbow spot came off as impressively as it should've considering how nutty it was. Strike exchange at the end felt genuinely intense rather than pro forma. The urn shot led to a nifty nearfall. Excellent Wrestlemania match, better than it had any right to be.
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Living Colour guys look old, which makes me feel old. That video made the Punk-Taker build look better than it was.
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Del Rio looked great, much better than usual, in his opening salvo. Loved him stomping on Dutch's fingers. But then he just whiffed on that corner kick. Yuck. Swagger's gut wrench power bomb was nasty, and I liked the little grappling sequence. But the ending just kind of happened, and the whole thing was less than the sum of its parts.
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Enjoyed the Wrestlemania montage playing to the Rocky theme. Diddy? Not so much.
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Didn't much care for Jericho-Fandango. The spot where Fandango kicked Jericho mid springboard looked good as did the Alabama Jam. Otherwise, they were off on a lot of stuff. In retrospect, it seems odd that they bothered to pay Jericho for this particular mini-run.