Childs
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Everything posted by Childs
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I didn't insist that anyone feel deep emotion about Reid Flair's passing. And I don't think it was "lashing out" to suggest that the amateur background comment seemed a little out of proportion with the sudden death of a 25-year-old. That said, Neil's follow-up comments have been perfectly reasonable, and I have no desire to fight about it. -
It's too bad that he got addicted to heroin and died because he once seemed like a good amateur? That's really the root of the tragedy for you?
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How do you know that they didn't try to get him help?
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Are you sure you have the right match? Didn't think this one compared well to either the 4/6 match or the taped fist match, though it was solid stuff for TV.
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I'm generally fine with Honaga, but this was a Benoit production all the way. He contributed all of the interesting offense, and frankly, the bumps he took on missed moves seemed a lot more devastating than anything Honaga hit. As a result, Honaga's flash pin off a short clothesline bordered on preposterous.
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I often feel a disconnect with FLIK's joshi picks but not in this case. This was a hell of a fun match. Big and nasty vs. little and courageous is one of your classic wrestling dynamics, and they played it to the hilt. Moreno and Toyota did a great job of establishing their approach in the first fall; they had to swarm from every direction at 100 mph to have a chance. Then, Moreno turned in a great face-in-peril segment complete with lots and lots of blood. I've now really liked her in both that elimination match from late 1990 and in this. The finishing stretch was all action, but it felt like a greater payoff than your typical AJW spotfest because the body of the match had established the underlying dynamic between the teams. The whole thing came off wild and exciting without being stupid.
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Horner wasn't as good at baseball as Doc was at wrestling. And yes, Windham should feel insulted by that comparison. He was more like a Cesar Cedeno or even a Dick Allen. I have an irrational love for ballplayer-wrestler comparisons.
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I got a kick out of revisiting this segment, which I hadn't thought about in years. My favorite moments were the cutaway shots to a horrified Sean Mooney in the control center. Jake also did a good job selling his anguish, especially when he peeked in the bag. This was goofy, sure, but it was a clever way to create some interest around a feud that could've been pretty meaningless. It was more compelling, for example, than most of the build we're seeing for this year's Wrestlemania.
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God, Piper was ripped by his standards. This was a basic match that nonetheless built heat on the Piper/Virgil vs. Dibiase feud. Piper came out hot, throwing hands. But even on offense, he teased the weakness of his bad knee. Ted eventually capitalized, and he and Sherri hammed it, up playing monumental assholes. Piper wouldn't submit to the figure four, so the ref did it for him, which seemed an effective way to keep Piper tough in defeat. One complaint: Ted's chair shots looked like those of a 10-year-old girl. If you're going to be a dick heel, swing that fucker like you mean it.
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Tim did a great job of describing what made this a classic, so I won't elaborate too much. It has to be the shortest feeling 50-minute match in history. I had forgotten the actual finish, so I was surprised when it happened and I realized that much time had elapsed. They just did an incredible job of hitting all the key notes of the factional rivalry without any of it feeling old hat. The Kawada-Taue brawl at the beginning was a particular highlight, and this was probably Fuchi's best performance in the feud. This match epitomizes the greatness of early '90s All-Japan in a way that's distinct from the stuff produced by the Misawa-Kawada rivalry. We've talked about this in other threads, but there was a richness created by having so many interesting match-ups up and down the factions. I expected this to be my MOTY coming into the set and saw nothing to change that assumption.
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I said "a lot of the earlier-generation talk." I'm aware that you pimped their matches in various places. But I'm also quite certain that when I got up to speed on the promotion (long after the fact) I did not read a lot about Kawada-Taue being one of the great All-Japan rivalries of the decade. I'm merely saying that at this point, I think it was.
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Tough to live up to the All Japan that came before it, but this was a nice little fight in its own right. They laid in the shots and did a good job building drama around the attempts to touch the turnbuckles. I prefer that a gimmick match like this represent a definitive stage in a feud. Instead, Austin's interference felt like it could have been the ending to any Jarrett-Pritchard match. Blood would've been nice as well. Nonetheless, I'm eager to see more from these guys.
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Definitely the best match between these teams and a hell of a lot more focused than their 1990 stuff. You don't usually think of Hansen as a face-in-peril guy, but he did a tremendous job in that role, eating a massive beating as he bled profusely. I also loved the way they staged the ending stretch, with the ref missing Hansen's tag and Doc desperately trying to finish off Spivey as Gordy kept knocking Stan out of the ring. They even pulled back to a long shot, so the TV fewer could properly take it in. Then we suddenly teleported to WWF or WCW as a second ref appeared to tell the first ref about the missed tag. And how cool was it when Hansen, finally clear to enter, bee-lined to Doc and took him out with the lariat? This felt way different than the other big AJPW tags of the era but was better for it. The 4/18 show has to go down as one of the best we've seen on any yearbook.
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I was quite surprised to find this a significantly stronger match than their 6/8/90 encounter. I guess I just like the more assertive Misawa, who rocked Jumbo with elbows to start the proceedings and then merrily slapped the shit out of him during a great mid-match exchange. They built to an awesome run of nearfalls, with Misawa staging a near-vintage comeback only to eat a brutal trio of back suplexes. Even though I knew the result, I popped for the spot where Misawa blocked Jumbo and then drilled him with a German suplex for a 2.9 count. From now on, I'll regard this and the 9/1/90 match as their masterpieces, with the 6/8/90 match a step down despite the memorable finish. This is a MOTYC, even if I expect it to be rapidly eclipsed by the 4/20 six-man.
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I feel like this feud was undersold in a lot of the earlier-generation talk about '90s All-Japan, which tended to dismiss pre-1995 Taue. Here, they were able to work a great, intense match that was totally different from their January brawl. It featured more of a traditional slow build from holds to big moves. But I loved the little touches of hate, like Taue punching Kawada in the kidney to stave off his early armwork and Kawada scraping his boot across Taue's face when he had him locked on the mat. I had always thought of Kawada's interest in submissions as coming later, but he really showcased the armbar here. And as always, he landed some beautiful momentum-shifting kicks. I didn't mind the ending. I guess it was a bit abrupt after some great nearfalls, but at least they put over the potency of Taue's finisher. So yeah, Kawada-Taue almost never misfired. It should be held up as one of the promotion's great rivalries.
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I agree with Loss that this was a step up from their excellent match the year before. Flair liked to work hard and obviously got jazzed for Pillman, who wanted to go shot-for-shot with him. Pillman, in turn, put over the standard Flair attack like a million bucks. It is a shame that they never got to work a big match on a Clash or PPV, because they were gold against each other.
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WCW always found a way to deliver good TV matches, even when the big picture of the promotion was kind of a mess. Flair-Morton gave us the goods as always, and Windham was back to being one of the best workers in the world in '91 after a largely undistinguished '90. I have no idea what I was supposed to take away from the ending brawl.
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