NintendoLogic

The only Korean cultural product I care about is the music. Stan Loona. Anyway, it's official. Next year's Wrestlemania will be in the LA area. Hopefully this means we get more movie parody trailers. Those were the best part of WM21.

Vader vs. Dustin Rhodes (WCW, 11/16/94) One of the interesting things about Dustin is that he tended to wrestle smaller than he really was. That's normally not a good thing, but it worked for him because it enabled him to generate more underdog sympathy than would be possible otherwise. Case in point, he's actually taller than Vader, but he comes across like a child standing up to a schoolyard bully at the beginning of this match. When he responds to Vader spitting in his face by tackling him and pummeling him on the ground, it's like he's striking a blow for anyone who's ever been pushed around. Also, he bumps far bigger than is customary for a man his size, including a 360 spin sell of a clothesline and getting thrown over the top rope onto the floor while attempting a bulldog. What makes it even better is that he can turn it around and use his size to his advantage if need be, like when he catches and powerslams Vader on a Stinger splash attempt. Combine that with the usual Vader brutality and no downtime to speak of and you have quite the sprint. Vader recovered a bit too quickly from the bulldog at the end, but the face eraser is such an awesome finisher that I'm willing to overlook it. ****1/4 Aja Kong vs. Manami Toyota (AJW, 11/20/94) Toyota can be a polarizing figure. Quite a few fans consider her to be the greatest women’s wrestler of all time, if not the greatest period, while a smaller group finds her virtually unwatchable. I’m kind of in the middle. You couldn’t pay me to watch most of her workrate epics, but she can be pretty spectacular in David vs. Goliath matchups. The story here, at least as I understand it, is that she’s basically the Energizer Bunny. She just keeps coming at you because you can’t keep her down for long. At the same time, she doesn’t have the firepower to go blow-for-blow with the heavy hitters, so she relies on big counters to create openings. For the first ten minutes or so of this match, Aja delivers a hellacious beating as only she can. Toyota keeps plugging away and has a few brief flurries, but she keeps getting cut off before she can get anything going. My favorite moment may have been when Toyota delivered a kick to Aja’s head that did little but piss her off even more. What finally allows Toyota to begin her comeback in earnest is when she boots Aja from the top rope to the floor. She eventually goes for the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex, but Aja blocks it by deadweighting herself. Toyota then goes for the moves that worked for her earlier in the match, but Aja sees them coming and is able to counter, stuffing Toyota’s momentum for good before hitting the uraken and putting her away with a Steiner screwdriver. I wish Toyota had sold more during her comeback, but that was never her thing, and it’s mitigated somewhat by the fact that she lost and had to be carried out afterward. In the spirit of full disclosure, this match holds a special place in my heart because it was the first joshi match I ever saw, but its greatness extends well beyond mere nostalgic appeal. Just be warned that Toyota spends much of the match screaming bloody murder like she’s auditioning for a role in a Friday the 13th film. ****3/4 Bret Hart/British Bulldog vs. Owen Hart/Bob Backlund (WWF, 2/26/95) How amazing is it that a short-lived B-show like Action Zone featured two of the greatest tags in the history of the company? The Kliq tag from the previous year was spectacular, and this is almost as good. Owen and Backlund are a well-oiled machine as they make constant switches and tear Bret’s leg apart Anderson-style. In fact, they probably spent too much time on the leg. I normally appreciate laser-like focus on a body part, but Bret couldn’t do much more but lie there and sell while his leg was being worked on. The match would have benefited from a couple of Kawada-style hope spots where Bret couldn’t reach his corner due to leg damage. Backlund may have actually been the star of the show, as his constant well-timed interference in blatant disregard of the stupid one save rule kept things moving and infuriated the crowd. Him running in to turn Bret back over after he had managed to reverse an Owen figure-four was the match’s clear highlight. Bret hobbling over to put Backlund in the sharpshooter on the outside to prevent him from interfering at the end was an excellent payoff. ****1/2 Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Akira Taue (AJPW, 4/15/95) Misawa is seeking to win his first Champion Carnival, the one major accolade that has eluded him since becoming the ace of All Japan. Standing in his way is Taue, who is on the Cinderella run of a lifetime. In other words, a classic sports story. And Misawa is sporting a broken orbital bone, making him more vulnerable than usual. This is more or less universally regarded as Taue's best singles match, and it may have the most airtight psychology of any match in history. We begin with some great King's Road exchanges, which Taue always did best with Misawa. Their respective movesets just seemed to lend themselves to sequences that could be complex without feeling choreographed. Just when it seems that Misawa has things in hand, Taue turns the tables by going after the orbital bone, including grinding his boot into Misawa's face. Landing a straitjacket snake eyes after Misawa had blocked a regular one earlier in the match was also awesome. The key to this match is Taue's chokeslam off the apron, which had put away Kawada and Kobashi and which he had failed to land on Misawa in their draw in the tournament. When Taue first goes for it, Misawa fights for his life to block it and returns to the ring. When he eventually hits it, he's too worn down to capitalize. In fact, he barely gets Misawa into the ring, allowing him to put his foot on the ropes when Taue goes for the pin. And Misawa's epic extended comeback is one for the ages. The thing about the rolling elbow is that it's devastating when it connects but also lends itself to the opponent cutting off Misawa's comeback by ducking and countering, making it the perfect move for these situations. Misawa swatting away Taue's final desperate lunge at the orbital bone might be my favorite ending to an All Japan match, which is saying something. ***** Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue (AJPW, 6/9/95) The first time I saw this, I thought it might be the greatest match I'd ever seen. The second time, I was so certain that it was that it seemed impossible to imagine another match coming close. What sealed the deal for me was the sequence with all four in the ring culminating in Taue chokeslamming Misawa onto Kobashi's injured leg. My tastes have shifted significantly over the years, but that’s been one of the few constants. To take just one example of this match’s transcendent greatness, Kawada booting Misawa and then Kobashi off the apron in the beginning is awesome not only in its own right but in the payoff and then the payoff to the payoff. After Misawa comes in off a hot tag, he catches Kawada napping on the apron and delivers a receipt. As soon as Kawada recovers, he casually strolls into the ring, kicks Misawa in his broken orbital bone, and then calmly walks back to his corner like nothing happened. On this most recent viewing, I noticed something that caused me to appreciate the match on a whole other level. It’s Kobashi’s determination to prove his toughness that ends up being his team’s undoing. It begins when he becomes hell-bent on hitting the moonsault despite the damage to his leg, and sure enough, it ends up aggravating the damage. A few minutes later, after Taue chokeslams Misawa off the apron, Kobashi shields Misawa with his body to protect him from further damage, causing Taue to throw him aside. Misawa starts rolling to his corner after Taue rolls him back in the ring, but he can’t tag out because Kobashi’s attempt to be the hero put him out of position. Kobashi tries shielding Misawa again a couple of minutes later, leading to Kawada and Taue dispatching him with a backdrop/chokeslam combo. Kawada then goes in for the kill, but Misawa fends him off with an elbow and heads to his corner. But once again, Kobashi isn’t there. The look of defeated resignation on Misawa’s face as his hand drops says it all. If Kobashi had known his role and stayed in his lane, his team might have pulled it out. Instead, like Icarus, he tried to fly too close to the sun and ended up crashing down to Earth. *****

Riddle's been trying to book his own angles on social media for the past several months, which I imagine would rub tons of people the wrong way. The company has gone so far as to specifically tell people in social media classes at the PC not to tag anyone on the main roster without their knowledge, which you think would be common sense.

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW, 6/3/94) At least until a couple of years ago, if you asked puro fans to name the greatest match of all time, this most likely would have been the consensus pick. Among a certain subset of fans, this match has been analyzed and dissected more than the Zapruder film. Even relatively mundane elements like Misawa working over Kawada’s leg have been the subject of extensive discussion and debate. There was also a time when some people would insist that you had to be familiar with literally years of backstory to truly appreciate the match’s greatness. That’s obviously way overblown, but I do think Misawa’s neck is an important part of the story that most viewers don’t seem to pick up on. He had to pull out of that year’s Champion Carnival with a (kayfabe) neck injury, and there are several points in the match where Kawada cuts Misawa off by targeting the neck. Misawa’s selling is so subtle that it’s easy to miss if you’re not specifically looking for it. And Kawada’s koppo kick near the end that Misawa blocks is a classic desperate attempt to prevent the match from slipping away. Other than that, what always made this match special to me is the seemingly dozens of sequences where they struggle for control that could go either way. It’s a total master class in the art of transitions. But on this most recent viewing, it was the violence of the strikes that stood out. The way Misawa stomped on Kawada’s face after reversing a powerbomb attempt was actually kind of shocking. Some of his elbows looked like he was trying to knock Kawada’s head into the third row. I can’t definitively say that this is the greatest singles match of all time, but it’s one of the handful of matches in the conversation. Even the fans are five stars. Check out the guy dancing in the stands after Misawa kicks out of the first powerbomb. ***** Vader vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (UWFi, 6/10/94) Some shoot-style purists don’t really care for Vader’s matches in UWFi because there’s hardly any of the matwork they see as one of the hallmarks of the style, but I dig them because they’re a lot closer to what I originally expected shoot style to look like. When I first heard about the style, I imagined it would resemble a worked version of UFC, so it was quite the shock when the first few matches I saw consisted mainly of catch wrestling with a few kicks thrown in. I thought it was like watching paint dry and had no idea how anyone could find it even remotely entertaining. I’ve since expanded my horizons enough to be able to get into the matwork, but I have to be in the right mood. When it comes to Vader clubbing dudes, on the other hand, any time is the right time. The beauty of it is that his work was already based around stiff credible offense, so he didn’t have to significantly alter his style to fit in. With this match in particular, the psychology is totally pro-style, but the emphasis on stiff strikes and legitimate submissions gives it the aura of a realistic fight. Tamura would seem to be hopelessly outmatched, but he still has a puncher’s chance, and he comes in with a brilliant strategy that he executes to perfection. He targets Vader’s legs with kicks and kneebars, forcing him to burn through his points on rope breaks and having him so concerned with protecting his leg that he opens himself up to knockout blows to the head. Five minutes in, Vader is on the ropes both literally and figuratively. But with his size and reach advantage, all he needs is one solid clean hit to turn things around. It’s kind of like an NFL game where an overwhelming favorite gets put in a hole by a team with a perfect gameplan but makes the necessary adjustments at halftime and ends up burying the underdogs. The powerbomb isn’t exactly a legitimate move, but the size difference meant that it didn’t require too much suspension of disbelief to buy it. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any better sub-10 minute singles matches. ****1/4 Bret Hart vs. 123 Kid (WWF, 7/11/94) Like Windham/Scorpio, this is an NWA-style title match where the champion faces a high-flying opponent and dominates much of the match and then allows a string of nearfalls before winning clean in the end. However, there’s a major difference in that both of the wrestlers here are babyfaces. A lot of times in matches like this, Bret will do things to heel himself like refuse to break on 5, but there’s none of that here. In fact, there were several spots specifically designed to keep him a babyface, like when he requested the match be restarted because Kid’s foot was on the ropes. As a result, this match isn’t as heated as it could be, but that doesn’t mean it lacks intensity. In fact, this is one of Bret’s best offensive performances. He had a Jumbo-like ability to make basic offense look brutal. He didn’t face too many guys significantly smaller than him during this period, and he seemed to relish having an opponent he could really maul. The way he rocked Kid in the corner with European uppercuts looked like something out of a Regal or Finlay match. I’m also a sucker for a good coconut crush. Kid bumped and sold impeccably, and he also threw some nasty kicks, including a rolling sobat that looked like it should have split Bret’s chin open. If not the greatest match in Raw history, certainly in the upper echelon. ****1/4 Vader vs. Nobuhiko Takada (UWFi, 8/18/94) This is probably Vader’s most famous match in UWFi and the most famous shoot-style match among American fans, which is somewhat ironic considering it’s an extreme outlier for the style. The pre-match atmosphere is something else, with Lou Thesz on hand to award his original world title belt to the winner and Yngwie Malmsteen of all people presenting Takada with flowers. The match itself consists mainly of stand-up exchanges and knockout attempts, making it a lot closer to Vader’s matches with the likes of Otto Wanz in Europe than pure shoot style. The usual points system (each fighter starts with 15 points and loses one point on a rope break and three points on a knockdown; losing all one’s points results in a TKO) is out the window, which is fortunate because the match would have been over in about two minutes otherwise. It also makes sense in kayfabe that the contest to determine the world’s greatest real fighter should be settled with a decisive finish rather than a technicality. Takada’s main goal throughout is to lock in the cross armbreaker, having made Vader submit to the move in their 1993 match, but Vader fights like death to prevent his arm from being hyperextended. Both men have a nice variety of strikes, but the repeated knockdowns do get repetitive, and the match likely would have benefited from a European-style rounds system to break things up periodically. They do spend a fair amount of time on the mat, and suffice it to say that their work there won't make anybody forget Volk Han. There is some jockeying for position and working for submissions, but there's also a lot of lay-and-pray. However, it is paid off excellently when Vader tags Takada with a jaw-dislocating palm strike that put an end to his cross armbreaker attempts. The deadlift powerbomb near the end looked devastating, although it really should have ended the match. But the actual finish came shortly afterward, so it's not that big a deal. Overall, this is a case of the sheer grandeur of the spectacle mostly overcoming whatever technical deficiencies may exist. ****1/4 Shawn Michaels/Diesel vs. Razor Ramon/123 Kid (WWF, 10/30/94) One of the great tag matches in company history, possibly the greatest. There’s only a couple of other matches I’d consider serious contenders for that accolade, and it’ll be a while before I get to them. It’s nearly all action while still maintaining classic tag structure. The meat of the match is a Ramon FIP section, and Shawn and Diesel work him over seemingly forever. The heels had some brutal-looking double-team offense, which along with Ramon's selling meant that the sense of peril never dissipated. I also really liked Nash simply yanking Ramon to the mat by his hair. Having Ramon serve as the FIP seems counterintuitive, but it made sense from a match quality standpoint because Kid would be far more energetic coming in off the hot tag. Plus, Ramon’s size meant that you could work him over far longer because he could absorb more punishment. I'll never enjoy the referee disallowing a tag because he was distracted, but if you have to have it in a match, this is the way you do it-immediately follow it with a heel miscommunication spot that leads to the actual tag. I'm generally of the opinion that what happens immediately after the hot tag is the least important part of a tag match, but the offense Kid strung together after coming in really was spectacular. Other than Ramon getting worked over, the HBK/Kid exchanges were easily the highlight of the match, with Shawn bumping around like a pinball and Kid flying all over the place. The only part of the match that really fell flat for me was the Razor's Edge in the beginning which Ramon hit with no real resistance and had no real impact on the match as a whole. ****1/2

Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue (AJPW, 12/3/93) This is a match where the stars align and everything seems to click. Every segment builds on everything that came before while also being interesting in its own right. This match is known for Kawada’s leg selling performance, possibly the greatest such performance in history. In fact, I would argue that it played a crucial role in the development of All Japan psychology. There were plenty of matches from the early 90s where a wrestler would have a limb worked over and blow it off down the stretch, but that was no longer tenable after Kawada permanently raised the bar for the company. It may be just a coincidence, but there’s some beautiful symmetry between this match and the 1988 RWTL final. In the former match, the damage to Kawada’s leg prevents him from assisting his partner. In this one, it prevents him from tagging out. On top of that, there’s all the King’s Road exchanges and multi-man sequences you expect from a high-end All Japan tag. I always enjoy Kobashi selling by closing one eye and gritting his teeth like he’s trying to do a Popeye impression. Without the Kawada leg selling, this is still a great match. With it, it’s an all-timer. ***** Aja Kong vs. Yumiko Hotta (AJW, 1/24/94) This is on the short list of the stiffest matches of all time. In fact, if you were to make a list of the stiffest men’s matches, this would make most of them look like pillow fights. And that’s not even counting the work on Hotta’s bloody hand. I can't tell where the gash came from, and someone’s hand isn’t exactly a common target in wrestling matches, so all the credit in the world to Aja for being able to integrate it into the story of the match. One of my least favorite aspects of joshi is the matwork. Far too often, someone will apply a hold, release it to whip the opponent into the ropes, apply a different hold, whip them into the ropes again, and then the opponent will reverse it and go on offense. I guess it keeps things moving, but it’s terrible psychology from the standpoint of making a match look like a competition. It’s the responsibility of the person in the hold to figure out how to escape or make the ropes. When you release a hold for no reason, you’re doing the work for them. One of the things that makes Aja my favorite women’s wrestler is the fact that she largely avoids falling into that trap. Even when she lets go of a hold, it’s to punt someone in the face rather than to set up a rope-running sequence. In all, this is one hell of a fight, albeit not for the faint of heart. ****1/2 Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart (WWF, 3/20/94) This match seemingly has something for everybody. There’s no brawling to speak of, but it contains everything else you could possibly want in a wrestling match. You’ve got great technical wrestling, fast-paced action, and superb psychology and character work. One of the things I really like about Bret is his penchant for throwing in subtle callbacks to previous matches without beating you over the head with them. He won the King of the Ring tournament in 1993 by pinning Bam Bam Bigelow with a victory roll, but Owen had it scouted and got the pin by blocking it when Bret went for it again. The story goes that this was originally planned to be more of a pure workrate match, but they came up with a new layout a few days before Wrestlemania to get Owen over as a heel. They obviously did a bang-up job, because Owen looks like he was born to wear the black hat. The match is wrestled mostly on the level, but it’s immediately obvious even to a new viewer who the face and heel are supposed to be. It’s a Rick Rude-caliber performance, except he comes across as more of a spectacular athlete and less of a tough guy. Also, Jerry Lawler’s comment about Stu watching in his orthopedic tuxedo followed by Vince McMahon’s indignant reaction always cracks me up. ****3/4 Stan Hansen vs. Akira Taue (AJPW, 4/11/94) A Taue victory over Hansen at this stage of their careers would be unthinkable under normal circumstances, but Hansen injured his ribs in a match against Kobashi the previous night, giving Taue the opening he needs. Hansen’s selling is just the right mix of realistic and theatrical, and he looks like he’s fighting for his life when he tries to deter Taue from going after the ribs in the beginning. As I revisit Hansen, I’m increasingly convinced that no other wrestler was on his level when it comes to the psychology of brawling. He gave a lot to his opponents when the situation called for it, but he didn’t let them walk all over him. He would always move to give himself breathing room and fire back whenever they left an opening. In turn, this forced them to tighten up their work, so when they had a sustained advantage, you know they really earned it. As for Taue, he targets the ribs right from the opening bell. There’s not much variety in his attack, but he makes up for it with his laser-like focus, even if it was largely by necessity because Hansen would have eaten him alive if he deviated from the gameplan. And it’s not there are that many moves that specifically target the rib area. Taue doesn’t get much air on his chokeslams, but that’s truer to the move’s origins as a sumo-style throat thrust. One of the grittiest and most claustrophobic matches you’ll ever see. ****1/4 Dustin Rhodes vs. Bunkhouse Buck (WCW, 4/17/94) I’m pretty certain that this is the last classic 80-style brawl to take place in the US, at least on a major stage, before the ECW influence became all-pervasive. I loved Dustin beginning the match by running down the ramp and leaping over the ropes to attack Buck. If you’re in a match with no disqualifications against someone you hate, you should be chomping at the bit to get at him, not waiting for the bell and then locking up in the middle of the ring. I also liked how all the weapons used were items the wrestlers (or Buck’s manager in the case of the brass knuckles at the end) brought to the ring themselves. Kendo sticks and the like being conveniently located under the ring is one of the worst modern wrestling tropes. Dustin’s punches were fantastic, and Buck’s cowboy boot stomps to Dustin’s bloody forehead looked absolutely vicious. Also, Dustin swinging wildly and missing completely is one of my favorite stock hope spots. Bobby Heenan marking out on commentary really put this over the top for me. ****1/2

Of all the things WWE does to drain wrestlers of their star power and make them into interchangeable cogs, few annoy me more than having new signees do photoshoots in identical Performance Center gear.

Meltzer had always defended Cornette even when they vehemently disagreed about modern wrestling, but it looks like Cornette wants to burn that bridge.

Hey, it takes time to learn how to find the hard camera.

Barry Windham vs 2 Cold Scorpio (WCW, 6/16/93) This is the last great match of Windham’s career, and it might actually be his best. There’s next to no mat wrestling, but it still has the psychology of a classic NWA title bout. The way Windham works this match is exactly what I want from a touring heel champion. When he asserts control, he recalls peak Jumbo as he dominates with an impressive array of punches, kicks, and suplexes. At the same time, his arrogance and sloppiness allow Scorpio to stay in the match. He clearly learned a lot from his erstwhile Horsemen colleagues, as his knee drop is reminiscent of Ric Flair and he takes control of the match by doing an Arn Anderson-style punch feint and then catching Scorpio when he ducks. Every time Scorpio gains a fleeting advantage, Windham immediately cuts him off, so it’s going to take something really big to turn the tide. That finally happens when Scorpio counters a superplex attempt. From there, he reels off an incredible stretch of nearfalls, including a slingshot 450 from the apron that would be a mind-blowing highspot even today. Even though Windham wins clean, Scorpio looks like a million bucks by pushing the champion to the limit and showcasing his high flying. ****1/2 Genichiro Tenryu vs. Shinya Hashimoto (WAR, 6/17/93) A slow-burning minimalist epic. I don’t think there’s a better way to set the tone for a high-stakes slugfest than to have both fighters hesitant to approach each other at the outset. You might expect them to be right at each other’s throats based on their interactions in the tag matches leading up to this, but that’s a lot easier to do when you have a partner backing you up. The tension builds and builds until it boils over with knees in the ropes and chops to the throat and clawing at eyes and headbutts. The intensity dipped quite a bit when Hashimoto started targeting Tenryu’s leg, but I appreciate him periodically breaking up the holds to work the leg with kicks. It was also nice to see Tenryu consistently sell the leg work throughout. Down the stretch, both men are aiming at each other’s heads and going for the knockout like two boxers who are both behind on points in the final round. You won’t see too many matches that manage to do more with less. ****1/2 Stan Hansen vs. Kenta Kobashi (AJPW, 7/29/93) This is a legendary match in the All Japan canon both because of the action in the ring and its place in Kobashi’s career arc. Earlier in 1993, Kobashi had recorded victories over Dan Spivey and Terry Gordy, his first ever wins against big-name foreign opponents. But Hansen is by far his biggest challenge yet. Kobashi throws everything he can think of at Hansen in the beginning, but he refuses to stay down and keeps firing away. So Kobashi decides to wear the big man down with facelocks, the same strategy Misawa employed in the May Triple Crown match. Just when it looks like Kobashi has everything going his way, Hansen catches him with perhaps the most brutal boot to the face in wrestling history. Kobashi’s cheek starts swelling up pretty much immediately, and there’s a photo of his face in the locker room afterward where he looks like he’s been in a car wreck. What makes it more shocking is how sudden it is. Most major transitions in matches are at least somewhat telegraphed, but the boot came out of nowhere. Hansen’s subsequent off-balance release powerbomb on the concrete was a great way for him to reassert control while still selling the punishment he had absorbed. Although the second half of the match is worked fairly evenly, they continue to employ underdog psychology, as Kobashi has to keep stringing offense together to keep Hansen down for any length of time. The iconic lariat at the end is of course an all-time classic finish, but the struggle on the turnbuckle immediately preceding it is almost as good. Top-notch action and top-notch storytelling on a level equalled by few matches in history. ***** Hiroshi Hase vs. Masahiro Chono (NJPW, 8/6/93) If you like cerebral detail-oriented wrestling, this is the match for you. Chono at this point has never lost in the G1, but he famously suffered a broken neck against Steve Austin the previous September, so he’s vulnerable here in a way he wasn’t before. Meanwhile, Hase has always been positioned at a level below the Three Musketeers, but he knocked off Shinya Hashimoto in the first round of the 1993 G1 and is looking to pull off another huge upset. But he’s not 100% either, as he’s sporting a huge bandage on his left leg. After some initial feeling out, Hase catches Chono with a stun gun and goes to work on the neck. This might be the first chronological appearance of an Austin-style stunner in a wrestling match. Later, Chono gained the advantage and went to work on Hase’s leg. The work from both men was rather dry, but the psychology was on point. Dueling body part work is one of my favorite things in wrestling when it’s sold well and paid off satisfactorily, and both men sell impeccably, particularly when Hase’s leg gives out while attempting a bridge on a Northern Lights suplex. Great nearfall late when Chono hits a diving shoulder block (the move he won the 1992 G1 finals with) followed by a powerbomb (the move he won the 1991 finals with), but Hase kicks out. Hase pays off the earlier neck work by winning with an STF variation, and Chono loses his first G1 match by falling victim to his own move. ****1/4 Vader vs. Davey Boy Smith (WCW, 8/18/93) I’d say this is easily Davey Boy’s best match not involving one of his brothers-in-law. He fit the mold of an ideal Vader opponent, as he had the strength to throw Vader around (how he managed to pull off multiple delayed vertical suplexes is beyond me) while still retaining some of the athleticism from his junior heavyweight days (as shown by his Okada dropkick with Vader on the turnbuckle). If he had better punches, this could have been a classic brawl instead of a more conventional big man vs. underdog match. But there are enough meaty bumps from both men (particularly Vader getting dropped on the guardrail) to make this more than simply Vader-by-numbers. And ten minutes or so of Vader punches to the jaw and clubbing forearms in the corner will never fail to entertain me. The powerslam off the top was a nice callback to the Sting match at Starrcade (and also the Simmons title change-I guess the powerslam was Vader’s Achilles’ heel) as well as a great way to set up the ref bump. ****1/4

Okada/Taichi was pretty dope. If you still think Taichi is a bad worker, you need to get your head examined.

Raw might get snowed out tonight. https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/2/2/21119620/snowstorm-school-canceled-delays-roads-salt-lake-city-alpine-canyons-juab-nebo-district Then again, it's probably for the best since the Iowa caucuses are tonight and they're getting slaughtered in the ratings regardless.

Stan Hansen vs. Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW, 2/28/93) This is a total war from the get-go as Hansen charges Kawada before the bell and they end up brawling in the streamers. Both men sell impeccably throughout, but they’re hardly ever just lying there absorbing punishment. They’re always firing back from underneath or at least trying to establish separation. The ten minutes or so after the opening flurry are rather disjointed, but that aspect makes the action far more compelling than it would be otherwise. Things tighten up considerably after Hansen hits a tope (talk about a phrase you don’t see every day) and they struggle over a suplex on the floor. I’ve never seen anyone sell the stretch plum nearly as well as Hansen does here. He looked like he was suffering brain damage from oxygen deprivation. Some of the most intense moments in their matches with each other come from Kawada desperately trying to fend off the lariat, and this match is no exception. Hansen lariating Kawada so hard he knocks himself out of the ring is an all-time classic spot and a great way to extend the match. I give this the nod over their match from the 1992 Carnival, although the margin ended up being closer than I expected. ****3/4 Akira Hokuto vs. Shinobu Kandori (AJW, 4/2/93) This is a match of such grandeur that it practically defies description. It’s both an interpromotional bout and a clash of wrestling philosophies, and the work in the ring is like a supersized version of the Hart/Austin submission match. It manages to be both an epic brawl and an epic wrestling match, making it the greatest war of attrition in wrestling history. They begin with one of the all-time great openings, as Hokuto sucker punches Kandori and grabs a house mic to cut a taunting promo. Kandori responds to this provocation by trying to rip Hokuto’s arm out of its socket. Pretty soon, they’re fighting on the outside, and Hokuto does a horrifically gory bladejob (courtesy of outside referee Wally Yamaguchi-yes, that Wally Yamaguchi, the one tried to chop off Val Venis’ pee pee) after a tombstone onto a table. The shot of the resulting dent on the table is one of the match’s most enduring visuals. After some more brawling on the outside, Kandori is bleeding as well, and they’re both so worn down that even basic moves seem like potential killshots. As great as the opening is, the ending might be even better. Kandori kicks out of a Northern Lights Bomb and reverses a second attempt into one of her own, which Hokuto kicks out of. Having thus expended their respective arsenals, they resort to simply punching each other out. Hokuto manages to crawl over and drape an arm over Kandori to get the pin. Cumulative damage is such an intuitively universal concept in combat sports that it’s kind of baffling that you hardly ever see it in pro wrestling. This is one of the few matches that can genuinely be classified as art. ***** Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Stan Hansen (AJPW, 5/21/93) Misawa and Hansen are two of the greatest wrestlers of all time (some would say THE two greatest), but they never really had chemistry with each other. This match is their best with each other by a significant margin due to having a much stronger psychological hook than their typical outings. Misawa’s elbow is by far the biggest threat to Hansen, so he makes a point of trying to neutralize it starting about nine minutes in when he catches Misawa in the ropes with an armbar. Hansen usually isn’t thought of as a master technician, but he employs an impressively varied arsenal of submissions. Of course, he also clubs Misawa’s arm with a TV monitor. This ends up as a clinic on how to sell an injured limb while still using it effectively. Misawa’s elbows have plenty of zip on them even with an injured arm, but he has to take time to recover every time they connect. One time, it takes him so long that Hansen is able to take him down with a Fujiwara armbar before he can go back on offense. As the match progresses, Misawa resorts to wearing Hansen down with facelocks to give his arm a break. Misawa is often described as stoic and expressionless, but I that that’s a bit of a bum rap. He was perfectly expressive when he needed to be, as this match shows. You can hear his vocalizations of pain when Hansen works him over and see the exertion on his face when he applies a surfboard or a facelock. This doesn’t have the kind of epic finishing run you usually associate with a classic Triple Crown match, but the ending is beautifully executed with Misawa catching a kick attempt, spinning Hansen’s leg away, and landing a rolling elbow in one fluid motion. ****1/2 Bret Hart vs. Mr. Perfect (WWF, 6/13/93) As far as I'm concerned, this blows their Summerslam 1991 match out of the water. They pack in seemingly 40 minutes’ worth of psychology while going less than 20. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single spot or sequence that doesn’t connect to the match as a whole and isn’t paid off in some way. The headlocks in the opening minutes establish Bret as the superior technician, forcing Perfect to take a shortcut by throwing a knee in the ropes that Bret sells masterfully. This might be the best performance of Hennig’s career, as he exhibits enough aggression and bending of the rules to show a desperate edge while stopping short of going full-blown heel. Blocking the sharpshooter by going after Bret’s injured hand is on the short list of greatest spots in company history. In addition to the aforementioned sell of the knee, Bret takes a massive bump from the apron to the guardrail and throws probably the greatest European uppercut of all time. I loved how Perfect reapplied a sleeper after Bret made the ropes, forcing Bret to counter for real by ramming Perfect into the turnbuckle. Perfect playing possum at the end to lure Bret in for a small package was a brilliant way to pay off the leg work without having it as a direct factor in the finish. ****3/4 Genichiro Tenryu/Takashi Ishikawa vs. Shinya Hashimoto/Michiyoshi Ohara (NJPW, 6/14/93) This is another fancam, which is kind of depressing because it makes you think about how many classic house show matches have been lost to history. Matches from the NJPW/WAR feud are a reliable source of hatred and violence, and when you add the element of a young boy trying to prove himself, you have something really special. Ohara is great at taking a beating and showing underdog fire, but he also gets a bit too big for his britches on a few occasions, and Team WAR relishes having the opportunity to put him in his place. Like when he comes in on a hot tag and gets immediately obliterated. And when he gets tagged in at the end only to be finished off by a chokeslam that looks like it should have sent him through the mat. The WAR wrestlers are both grumpy pricks who have no compunction in engaging in illegal double-teams and throwing in additional cheap shots afterward. Hashimoto is surprisingly not that much of a factor, although I really liked it when he knocked Tenryu off the apron at the beginning and tried to drag Ohara to his corner later on. Tenryu beating up Ohara after the match for no real reason was the perfect capstone. ****1/2

Didn't the VOD company Shane tried to launch in China lose money hand over fist? That's the only non-WWE business venture he had any real involvement in that I know of. What makes the company shakeup even more puzzling is that the corporate side of WWE is doing great. Look at all the TV and sponsorship deals they've made. It's the wrestling side that's struggling, and that's all Vince.

Genichiro Tenryu/Koki Kitahara vs. Shiro Koshinaka/Kengo Kimura (WAR, 10/23/92) When reviewing matches I’ve written about in the past, I’ve tried my best to update my thoughts and not simply repeat myself. But in this case, I don’t think I can improve upon what I wrote about this match last year. So I’ll just reproduce it: “As far as I'm concerned, this is the crown jewel of the NJPW/WAR feud. Both members of Team WAR bleed. Chairs and tables are used as weapons. Guys in martial arts uniforms brawl with the wrestlers and each other. The fans pelt the ring with garbage. Tenryu picks a fight with Masa Saito on commentary. At no point is there even a hint of sportsmanship or fair play. To top it all off, Tenryu beats Koshinaka with a powerbomb and keeps powerbombing him after the match until Saito runs in to break it up. This is everything an interpromotional match should be. Hell, this is everything pro wrestling should be. You need to go out of your way to watch this if you haven't already seen it.” ****3/4 Ricky Steamboat/Shane Douglas vs. Barry Windham/Brian Pillman (WCW, 12/28/92) I’d put this comfortably ahead of any Hollywood Blondes tag. This is a double-FIP tag with some great meat-and-potatoes heel work from Windham and Pillman. It’s nothing fancy, but I like seeing a team take every opportunity to get in cheap shots behind the referee’s back. The opening minutes are a bit weird in that the babyfaces have a sustained advantage but it’s neither conventional babyface shine nor heel in peril. Things pick up after Douglas takes a spill from the top turnbuckle to the floor and gets clotheslined by Windham on the outside. Pillman is no slouch in the bumping department either, as he goes from the apron to the floor and lands throat-first on the guardrail. The crowd is subdued early on, but they seemed to wake up after Steamboat whacked Windham with a chair. I always enjoy seeing heel subterfuge backfire. I also got a kick out of Steamboat wagging his finger at Windham while being worked over and Jesse Ventura commenting that he wasn’t in any position to be giving lectures. ****1/2 Vader vs. Sting (WCW, 12/28/92) You know Vader means business when he takes his mask off in the heat of battle. This is sometimes remembered as a WCW title match, but it’s actually for a far richer prize: the prestigious King of Cable trophy. Awesome first few minutes with Vader shrugging off Sting’s blows and throwing him around like a lawn dart, forcing Sting to really fling himself at the big man to get him off his feet. After a missed Stinger splash on the outside, Vader takes control and pummels Sting to the point where a referee stoppage would have been a believable finish. Vader’s butt splash sunset slip counter is one of my favorite signature spots because it was roughly 50-50 whether or not it would connect. If pro wrestling was a competitive sport, not everything would hit cleanly, and Vader’s penchant for adding realistic flourishes to his matches was one of his greatest strengths. There’s another great example near the end when he hits a splash but can’t cover because his momentum causes him to bounce away. The physics were a bit questionable, but it was a nice idea. Sting’s punch-drunk selling was world class, though it doesn’t take much to sell when Vader is involved. I especially loved how after he fought off a superplex attempt, he simply collapsed to the mat rather than coming off the top. Even the restholds enhanced the match. Note how Sting went into rope-a-dope mode after a chinlock, as if he recognized that was a sign that Vader was running out of gas. This ended up right on the borderline of five stars for me, so I had to watch it again to decide which way to go. Flair/Funk presented me with a similar dilemma, and in both cases, I felt comfortable awarding the full five after a subsequent viewing. I’ve thus resolved that going forward, if I’m not saying hell no to five stars, I’m saying yes. ***** Bret Hart vs. Ric Flair (WWF, 1/9/93) The Rockers had some iron man matches with the Rougeaus on the house show circuit in 1989, but I’m pretty sure this is the first 60-minute singles iron man match in any promotion. How’s this for a hot take: this is not only Flair’s best WWF match, it’s also the best long Flair title match outside of Clash 6. Flair may have been past his prime here, but he was still more than capable of having a 60-minute match in his sleep. Accordingly, this is largely a Flair-style match, although Bret is far from a broomstick. In fact, his realistic selling is one of the key aspects of the match. It also helped that as the challenger, Flair didn’t have to worry about making his opponent look good and could just concentrate on having a great match. When you know going in that a match is going to go a certain length, one of the main challenges is keeping fans invested in the opening minutes. Flair's arm work didn’t really lead to anything, but it was interesting enough in its own right to serve as a fine time filler. Bret gets the first fall about 28 minutes in with a reverse roll-up, and the “real” match begins shortly afterward when Flair starts going after the leg. Flair winning two falls with the figure-four (albeit while grabbing the ropes for additional leverage) seems rather odd in an era when it was unheard of for top babyfaces to submit, let alone the world champion. But drama in Iron Man matches usually comes from the heel building up a lead and the face chasing him, and that’s probably the best way they could have built it up. This does meander at points, but it’s nothing too egregious. And neither wrestler ever seemed even remotely blown up, which is impressive. ****1/4 Cactus Jack vs. Paul Orndorff (WCW, 2/21/93) Foley’s work in WCW is pretty historically significant because it serves as the bridge between 80s-style brawling and the ECW style of weapons and stunt bumps. In fact, this is one of the few matches that wouldn’t look out of place in either Memphis in the 80s or ECW in the 90s. It’s a falls count anywhere match, so to really put the gimmick over, they spend hardly any time in the ring. We get the requisite nutty Foley bumps along with Orndorff using anything he can get his hands on to tear Jack’s leg apart. He even rips off Jack’s knee brace and uses it as a weapon. The Observer reported at the time that they had to go home early because Orndorff forgot several planned spots, but I honestly don’t know what more they could have done to each other. ****1/2

KawadaSmile must be distraught to see the value of his WWE stock in freefall.

I would never presume to tell anyone how they should feel about a particular match. I can't even guarantee that my current takes will reflect my views down the road. This should be seen mainly as a snapshot of where I am right now as a fan. Rick Rude vs. Ricky Steamboat (WCW, 6/20/92) At his peak, Rude was pretty much the perfect heel. He possessed enough toughness and skill to be a threat to anybody while having no redeeming qualities that would make someone want to cheer for him. Taunting an opponent with his hip swivel and then wincing in pain because one of his body parts is injured is perhaps the quintessential Rude sequence. The best gimmick matches are ones where the gimmick accentuates the work in the ring without overwhelming it. Here, the Iron Man stipulation plays a major role in the psychology of the match, but it’s still a wrestling match at heart. Steamboat starts out as a house of fire and goes to town on Rude’s ribs. There aren’t that many wrestling moves that specifically target the ribs, so it’s to Steamboat’s credit that he’s able to mix things up and keep it interesting for as long as he did. However, it’s Rude who gets the first fall, albeit in a flukey manner after catching Steamboat with a knee. He’s then able to hit the Rude Awakening to go up 2-0. We see the debut of the intentional DQ as a means of inflicting further damage as Rude comes off the top with a knee (one of the few instances of the idiotic top rope DQ rule actually enhancing a match) and then pins Steamboat to go back up two falls. There are no rest periods after falls, so the earlier rib work plays a crucial role in keeping Steamboat in the match. Rude goes in for the kill after going up 3-1, but Steamboat fends him off by firing at the ribs, so Rude decides to essentially play prevent defense with his arsenal of wear-down holds. Steamboat is able to gradually work his way back in and eventually ties it up, leading to a frantic final few minutes. The rib work comes back into play in a classic finish. Steamboat is seemingly out after an extended Rude sleeper that they milk the hell out of, but he manages to pull off the Bret Hart counter, except he comes down on Rude’s injured ribs instead of flipping over, going ahead for good with half a minute remaining. The intensity dips a bit in the middle portion of the match, but as an overall package of action, psychology, and character work, this is hard to beat. The only thing missing is Rude selling an atomic drop. ****3/4 Vader vs. Sting (WCW, 7/12/92) Vader was the perfect monster heel-most of his offense looked like it would cripple a normal man, and he had an innate understanding of when to be a brick wall for an opponent and when to be a pinball. And Sting was his perfect opponent-he was big enough to believably execute power moves on Vader, athletic enough to catch him off guard with aerial offense, and selfless enough to absorb the full force of his blows. As I said at the outset, David vs. Goliath is one of my favorite match archetypes, and this series might be the pinnacle. I normally don’t like it when a larger heel challenges a smaller face to a test of strength because it puts the face in a no-win situation. Winning the test of strength isn’t a realistic scenario, so he’s an idiot if he accepts and a coward if he declines. But I did like Sting gaining the advantage with a Greco-Roman thumb to the eye followed by stomping on Vader’s foot. You ideally wouldn’t want your babyface champion to engage in such shady tactics without provocation, but that’s probably the best out they had. One aspect of Vader I think deserves more attention is his submission game. He wasn’t quite the man of a thousand holds, but he was like Andre the Giant in that his sheer size made even basic holds seem devastating. Fantastic finish with Sting seemingly having victory in hand before accidentally ramming his head into a turnbuckle while performing a Stinger splash. Vader casually sidestepping Sting’s punches before hitting a powerbomb was a beautiful twist of the knife. It’s a clean decisive win by Vader, but it’s not so dominant that it seems hopeless for Sting to prevail in a rematch. The only real off note was Vader going to the top rope to set up a Sting Samoan drop. Sting should’ve just let him come off the top and be disqualified. ****3/4 Vader vs. Ron Simmons (WCW, 8/2/92) Jim Ross had to have been in hog heaven calling a world title match between two college football All-Americans. Simmons was a great power wrestler, but he wasn’t much for leaving his feet, so this isn’t an ideal matchup. But Vader was in enough of a groove to get the best out of him. In this case, that means bumping big for Simmons’ power moves to make him look like a credible challenger before regrouping and beating him within an inch of his life, letting him win with a powerslam out of nowhere, and getting in and out as quickly as possible. At one point, he throws a straight right that looks like it should have shattered Simmons’ jaw. He even busts out a Stinger splash. One of my favorite things about Vader is that he was incredibly giving to his opponent when the situation called for it, but he made them earn it. Even if you managed to put him down, that was just the beginning because he’d recover before you and go back on the attack. You’d have to do it several times to really turn the tide. I also really like his tendency to pull back so far when hooking a leg on a pin that it allowed his opponent to slip out through the back door. It was as if he forgot his own strength in the heat of the moment. The post-match scene here, with the kid running up to the rail and jumping for joy along with all the other babyfaces coming out of the locker room to celebrate, never gets old. ****1/4 Rick Rude vs. Masahiro Chono (NJPW, 8/12/92) This is the G1 Climax final and is also for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, which had been vacant ever since Ric Flair jumped to the WWF. Someone as character-driven as Rude would seem to be a fish out of water in the King of Sports, but he does an amazing job of integrating his shtick into a serious title match. It should be noted that several of the spots are cribbed wholesale from the Steamboat Iron Man match, including the tombstone reversal spot (a Rude staple), the superplex spot, and the kick off the turnbuckle counter to the sleeper. Rude also doesn’t receive enough credit for his mat wrestling abilities. He wasn’t much for the hold-counterhold stuff, but he was pretty awesome at both working holds and fighting to get out of ones applied to him. For his part, Chono was outstanding at keeping things moving in a 70s-style chess match manner. Rude counters a sleeper with a jawbreaker, so the second time he tries it, Chono releases the hold and reapplies it on the ground. Rude has a headlock applied, so Chono counters with a shin breaker and starts targeting Rude’s leg. Rude leaves his arm exposed while trying to reverse an Indian deathlock, so Chono goes after the arm. Within that context, Rude’s selling was fine. There was no reason for him to be hobbling around if Chono wasn’t going to go back to the limb. This is almost certainly the greatest individual performance of Rude’s career, if not necessarily the best overall match. ****1/2 Bret Hart vs. British Bulldog (WWF, 8/29/92) This match is well-known for Bret having to carry everything due to Davey Boy being fooked. You can see it at the very beginning when a Bulldog shoulderblock causes Bret to fly all the way out of the ring. I imagine Dynamite Kid did that a thousand times working with stiffs in Stampede. There are even Flair standbys like being thrown off the top rope and begging off in the corner. It was amusing to see Bret applying a chinlock and whispering in Bulldog’s ear followed immediately by some complex sequence. Bret obviously deserves all the credit in the world for keeping things lively and interesting throughout while not overly taxing Davey Boy’s crack-addled brain. It helped that just about everything he did had more mustard on it than usual, like he was seriously pissed and taking it out on Bulldog. Not that I’d blame him. Also of note, this may be the greatest performance of Bobby Heenan’s career on commentary. He was seriously on fire with the one-liners. My favorite was when Vince McMahon said that the pound wasn’t the only British thing taking a beating (referencing the UK’s currency crisis), to which Heenan replied “You mean the pound where he lives?” I don’t think this is Bret’s best match, but it probably is his best individual performance as well as one of the great one-man shows in wrestling history. ****1/2

Worthy of the honor without a doubt.

Dustin Rhodes/Ricky Steamboat vs. Enforcers (WCW, 11/19/91) Anderson and Zbyszko were originally set to defend the tag titles against Dustin and Barry Windham, but they put Windham out of action by breaking his hand at Halloween Havoc the previous month. But they have a mystery partner to take Windham’s place. It turns out to be Ricky Steamboat, last seen spitting hot fire (yes, literally) in the WWF. Surprise partners and opponents in wrestling almost always suck, but this one really delivered. Best of all was the Enforcers reacting like Dustin had brought out the Terminator as his partner. As for the actual match, I had thought it was close to tag team perfection in the past, but I found it surprisingly underwhelming this time around. I liked how Zbyszko set up a mini-FIP segment on Dustin by forcing his way to his corner to tag out while in an armbar. It was as if Dustin was so focused on working the arm that he neglected cutting the ring in half and Larry took advantage of his youth and inexperience. I don’t know if that was the intended idea, but it helps me enjoy the match more, so I’m going with it. The actual FIP segment on Steamboat is when they lost me a bit. They check all the boxes in the standard FIP formula, but it needed more violence and/or hope spots to stand out as a truly elite example. Tagless switches and partner-assisted abdominal stretches aren’t going to do much for me these days. Also, it was too brief to truly hit a fever pitch. Steamboat does his best to get the work over by selling like a soccer player trying to draw a red card, but it was so theatrical that it actually took me out of the match. I’d also like to talk about how much I despise the referee disallowing a blind tag because he didn’t see it spot. When a tag team works an opponent over, they’re building tension, and that person executing a tag releases that tension. When the referee waves it off, they’re back at square one and have to build it up all over again. It’s especially egregious when the spot is preceded, as it almost always is, by the heels switching out without tagging behind the referee’s back with no repercussions. It’s one of those things that makes wrestling fans look like complete rubes because it blatantly insults the intelligence of the viewer. The finish was fantastically executed, although Steamboat was probably a bit too fresh after the beating he had absorbed. Not only did the Enforcers get caught off-guard by a blind tag after initially gaining the advantage with one, Zbyszko had his back turned just long enough to not see Steamboat about to hit the crossbody until it was too late. ****1/4 Barry Windham/Dustin Rhodes vs. Steve Austin/Larry Zbyszko (WCW, 2/29/92) This is more restrained than Steiners/Nasties, but they do a similarly excellent job of working a crazy brawl within the strictures of a standard tag match. There are just enough sequences involving all four men going at it to add an element of chaos without a complete breakdown of structure. At its core, this is a double-FIP tag, and Windham’s is the better of the two. He takes some pretty nasty bumps throughout, including getting crotched on the guardrail. The eventual hot tag combines two of my favorite stock spots, the jawbreaker counter to a sleeper and Windham falling backwards to his corner to make the tag. The subsequent FIP segment on Dustin was a bit chinlock-heavy, but I loved the recurring element of Austin shutting him down with clotheslines. It’s just like any other sport. If there’s a play the other team can’t stop, you keep running it until they make you switch it up. Dustin finally countering by hitting Austin with his own stun gun was a superb payoff. This just needed some blood and international objects to really put it over the top. ****1/2 Stan Hansen vs. Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW, 4/6/92) So far in this project, there have been a few matches that haven’t done quite as much for me as they had in the past. This one had the opposite effect: it shot way up my list in a way I wasn’t expecting. It should come as no surprise that this is an absolute war from the get-go, as both men rush each other and show a willingness to absorb the other guy’s blows in order to get in a good shot of their own. It’s a style of claustrophobic brawling I find much more agreeable than two guys standing there and taking turns hitting each other with forearms. Kawada chopping Hansen down with off-balance leg kicks was especially great. A lot of opponents will target Hansen’s lariat arm, but going after his legs is a much smarter play because he’ll actually sell work on his leg. He’s so hobbled that it takes a powerbomb on the outside to give him a necessary breather. As the match progresses, there’s an increased emphasis on going for the knockout blow and countering the other man’s haymakers. Some excellent teases of the Western lariat near the end. I’m all but certain there’s never been a non-final Champion Carnival match anywhere near this good. ****3/4 Vader/Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Keiji Mutoh/Hiroshi Hase (NJPW, 5/1/92) Tag team wrestling was never a big deal in New Japan (at least, nowhere near as much as All Japan), so there are relatively few classic IWGP tag title matches. But this one is right near the top. The opening minutes are rather nondescript, although Mutoh and Hase suplexing the big men got a nice reaction. I also enjoyed the contrast between Vader’s style based around pure stiffness and Bigelow’s more American-style heel work with eye rakes and over-the-top bumping. Business picks up about ten minutes in after Bigelow rips the bandage off Hase’s head and he and Vader start teeing off on his forehead, leaving him a bloody mess in short order. This is notable for being one of the few competitive tag matches without a hot tag. After Hase manages to string together some offense against Vader and cuts off Bigelow’s attempted run-in, he and Mutoh double-team Bigelow and take him out by dropping him on the guardrail. From there, the match has a definite All Japan feel with Mutoh and Hase wearing Vader down with tandem offense while keeping Bigelow neutralized. There’s also an All Japan-esque shift in momentum initiated by Bigelow reversing an attempted double-team into a double DDT on the floor. From there, the tables are turned as Vader and Bigelow dispose of Mutoh (including gorilla pressing him onto a group of Young Lions) before finishing off Hase. ****1/2 Kenta Kobashi/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat (AJPW, 5/25/92) This match is famous for the torture session the Can-Ams administer on Kikuchi in front of a molten hometown crowd. I’ve seen this described as a Southern-style tag, but I think it has too many distinctly Japanese elements to truly qualify. For one thing, all the double-teams and interference take place in plain view of the referee without any need for distraction since Japanese referees are far more lenient about enforcement of tag rules. In addition, when Kikuchi gets worked over, the drama is from the punishment he’s receiving rather than trying to tag out and being thwarted (there are only a couple of hope spots). However, the Can-Ams do engage in more overt heeling, like taunting the audience and arguing with the referee over the count, than is typical in Japanese tags. Interestingly, the closing stretch is largely a mirror image of the one in Vader/Bigelow vs. Mutoh/Hase, only with the roles reversed. The Can-Ams try to neutralize Kobashi so they can finish off Kikuchi with double-teams, but Kobashi DDTs Furnas on the outside, allowing him and Kikuchi to land double-teams of their own to set up the finishing run. Other than Kikuchi snapping on Kroffat like Ralphie on Farkus in A Christmas Story, not much of note happens in the opening minutes, but once the match reaches its climax, it’s about an intense and dramatic as wrestling gets. ****3/4

I like how WWE's production crew is so incompetent that they had to upload alternate footage that actually showed Edge's first spear.

I've been advocating for Charlotte vs. Shayna for the past year. It's one of the few matchups they could run involving actual stars that's totally fresh, and Charlotte vs. opponent with shooter gimmick has a proven track record of success.

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Akira Taue (AJPW, 1/15/91) The Holy Demon Army is one of the most storied tag teams of all time, so it’s easy to forget that they began the 90s as mortal enemies. Kawada took it hardest of all when Taue switched sides to join Jumbo’s squad, so all their interactions in tags and six-mans were driven by extreme animosity. This is their first singles match, and it’s the knock-down-drag-out affair you’d expect from the way they went at each other the previous year. Taue jumps Kawada as he enters the ring and they’re off to the races, brawling on the outside, ramming each other into the post and guardrail, and whacking each other with chairs. Once they get back in the ring, a bloody Taue focuses on picking apart Kawada’s leg. Taue’s leg work is a nice mix of conventional holds and violent stomping and ramming the leg into the post (there’s even the All Japan standby of the shin breaker onto a table), but the impact is lessened by Kawada making no real effort to sell unless his leg was being explicitly targeted. To be frank, it’s not one of his better selling performances, which admittedly for Kawada is an incredibly high bar. However, he makes up for it by repeatedly kicking Taue with his good leg whenever he was in a supine position. A war like this needs a brutal ending to cap it off, and Kawada’s rabbit lariat definitely fits the bill. He may as well have cracked Taue in the back of the skull with a baseball bat. As great as the epic Triple Crown matches were, I’m far from the only one who wishes All Japan featured more short heated brawls like this one. ****1/4 Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Kenta Kobashi vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue/Masanobu Fuchi (AJPW, 4/20/91) This is the most celebrated of the Jumbo/Misawa six-mans, and with good reason. It goes 50-ish minutes (the official time is 51:32, but the version I have is 48:34 bell-to-bell and there’s no clipping I could detect), it hardly ever drags, and something interesting happens virtually every minute. The first ten minutes alone contain more sublime moments than I could count, my favorite being Taue repeatedly knocking Kawada off the apron to the point where it becomes almost like a Family Guy-esque running gag. The way Jumbo applauded after the third one really put it over the top for me. However, there’s a noticeable dip in the action around 22 minutes in. Misawa’s team works Taue over seemingly forever and shows no real urgency in trying to put him away, nor does Taue show any in working from underneath. Only occasional run-ins from Jumbo and Fuchi break up the tedium. But if they lost me with that part of the match, they brought me right back with the Kobashi FIP section. Jumbo’s squad rips his leg to shreds, and he elevates the sense of peril with his frequent desperate attempts to tag out. Kobashi reversing a Fuchi suplex and crawling to his corner only for Fuchi to grab his ankle with the tag just out of arm’s reach is one of the greatest came-up-just-short spots you’ll ever see. But that leads to the second major problem with this match: Kobashi doesn’t sell the leg at all down the stretch. I guess he limps a little, but it doesn’t hinder him in any meaningful way. I don’t necessarily need every instance of body part work to lead to something, but when someone’s leg is targeted as intensely and for as long as Kobashi’s was, there has to be come kind of payoff. On a happier note, Kawada setting up the win for his team with a rabbit lariat was a brilliant payoff to Taue’s earlier dickishness. The flaws in this match are enough to place it clearly below 10/19/90, but it’s still easily above virtually every other wrestling match. One more thing: after watching the six-man matches with an analytical eye, I have to conclude that they make Fuchi look better than he really is. I don’t want to sound too denigrating because he’s one of the greatest of all time at working holds, has a pronounced sadistic streak, and clearly enjoys punching people in the face, all admirable qualities for a pro wrestler. But he also has the luxury of mainly coming in to torture opponents who’ve already been weakened and doesn’t have to spend much time selling or facing opponents at full strength. He’s kind of like a cleanup hitter whose RBI numbers are inflated because he always comes to the plate with runners in scoring position. ****3/4 Vader vs. Keiji Mutoh (NJPW, 8/10/91) This match is famous for being the first instance of fans at Sumo Hall throwing pillows into the ring to show their appreciation for the match they just witnessed. I have no earthly idea why New Japan chose not to tape this, but whoever brought one of those unwieldy early 90s camcorders to the arena deserves our undying gratitude. Although this is another match that is marred somewhat by overuse of the Irish whip, it’s Vader’s career performance up to this point. I was amused by how shocked the crowd seemed to be by some of his offense. This was an audience that was by no means unaccustomed to stiff work, but Vader’s brutality was too much even for them. Perhaps just as much as his stiffness, one of Vader’s calling cards was his willingness to bump like a pinball for high-flying offense. For that reason, his best matches tended to be with athletic heavyweights who could withstand his abuse and were big enough to credibly throw him around. Mutoh fits the bill here, as would Sting and Misawa in later years. In the past, I had thought that Mutoh did too much no-selling during his comebacks, but this time I saw a clear progression in his selling with him taking longer to recover as the match progressed and he became more worn-down. Vader countering a handspring elbow with a German suplex/uranage combo was the spot of the match for me. I also really liked Mutoh’s desperate pin attempts at the end. Trying to go blow-for-blow didn’t work and neither did playing hit-and-run, so simply going for pins was the only arrow left in his quiver. ****1/2 Keiji Mutoh vs. Masahiro Chono (NJPW, 8/11/91) I’m pretty lukewarm at best on both these guys, but this holds up as a classic. It’s like a 70s-style match in build and psychology but with more modern moves, and it’s surprisingly easy to watch for a match that goes nearly 30 minutes at a rather methodical pace. Other than an extended Muta lock/cattle mutilation in the middle, the chess match-style matwork never drags, and the transitions and escalations feel organic. There’s an incredible sequence in the late-mid portion when Chono hits a pair of piledrivers and goes for the STF, but Mutoh rolls to the outside to escape. Chono then tries to piledrive Mutoh on the mat, but he does a backdrop counter and ends up landing a piledriver of his own on the concrete. Not only is that the sequence of the match, it’s the point it really kicks into high gear. Some of the suplexes and submissions down the stretch felt like filler, and they botched an attempted dropkick counter to a missile dropkick and then immediately repeated it, which is never a good look. The ending turned out to be a pretty ingenious curveball. Mutoh had repeatedly tried and failed to land the moonsault, and Chono’s yakuza kick had been his Achilles’ heel the entire match. After finally countering a yakuza kick, he goes up for the moonsault again. Under traditional pro wrestling storytelling, that’s a signal that he’s going to hit it and get the win. But Chono counters by putting his knees up and wins with a powerbomb. While All Japan’s Four Pillars would end up leaving New Japan’s Three Musketeers (and everyone else, for that matter) in the dust, this is far more accomplished than any of the matches the Pillars would have with each other for at least a couple of years. ****3/4 Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue/Masanobu Fuchi (AJPW, 10/15/91) You’d be hard-pressed to find a better example of a team taking sheer sadistic glee in inflicting pain on their opponents. Misawa comes in with a busted nose that Jumbo immediately targets, putting him out of commission for basically the entire match. He’d return periodically and try to assert himself, but Jumbo’s squad would cut him off every time by zeroing in on his nose. As such, this quickly becomes a de facto 3-on-2 handicap match, and there are times when it more closely resembles an enhanced interrogation session at a CIA black ops site than a wrestling match. Jumbo and company even take the opportunity to bust out some unorthodox offense like a stomach claw and a Punjabi plunge. Pointing Kawada out to the referee to prevent him from interfering while freely interfering themselves was outstanding Japanese-style heeling. This is just competitive enough to be a fully realized match rather than a glorified squash, but Misawa’s team is never a serious threat to turn the tide. One final note: the amount of heel heat Taue got was unreal. The fans would still cheer for Jumbo and Fuchi even while booing their underhanded actions, but they booed Taue’s very existence like he was Vince McMahon in 1998. ****1/2

The only thing on the card I have any interest in is the Yapapi strap match, and that's only for the trainwreck factor. Daniel Bryan seems to be the only person on the planet who can get a decent singles match out of Bray Wyatt, but doing it in a gimmick match that is certain to contain loads of goofy supernatural bullshit might be too much of an ask even for him.

Vader vs. Riki Choshu (NJPW, 8/19/90) Even at this early stage of his career, Vader was the absolute master of the no-bullshit 10-to-15 minute slugfest, which may be the greatest style of wrestling ever devised, all things considered. It may not hit the heights of a 30+-minute epic, but it’s also a lot less likely to go off the rails. You can definitely tell that Vader cut his teeth in the AWA with the way he works a king of the mountain segment. You know what, I think the king of the mountain spot is ripe for a return to pro wrestling. It’s a far more interesting way of passing time than an extended hold, and overcoming an opponent with the high ground makes anybody look like a badass. Truth be told, Vader’s performance was such that he could have had this match with just about anybody and it would have been entertaining, but Choshu held up his end enough to make this a classic title bout. Making a comeback by punching Vader’s injured eye was pretty nuts, and Choshu chopping down his opponent with lariats always feels like a major accomplishment. This makes you wonder what they could have done had they met in their respective primes (a few years later in Vader’s case and a few years earlier in Choshu’s). ****1/4 Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW, 9/1/90) As in June, the opening minutes brilliantly set the tone for both the match and the rivalry as a whole. Both wrestlers try to throw elbows on rope breaks but are blocked, showing the respect Jumbo has developed for Misawa’s elbow. Unfortunately, also as in June, they spend the next several minutes stuck in first gear. In fact, the lack of selling makes it even worse, as it feels like they’re aimlessly trading moves. The turning point, both in the match and arguably in All Japan as a whole, comes about 14 minutes in when Jumbo counters a Misawa diving headbutt with a facebuster. Misawa had employed that move to great effect both in June and earlier in this match, so we begin to see the learned psychology that would become one of the hallmarks of King’s Road. There’s another example shortly afterward when they redo the backdrop pinfall reversal sequence from the end of the June match, only with the roles reversed. The most notable moment of the match comes when Jumbo loses his cool and goes HAM on Misawa, even wasting him with a chair on the outside. When Misawa returns to the ring, Jumbo chucks him right back out to a chorus of boos. All Japan didn’t really do angles as such, so that’s the closest we got to an actual Jumbo heel turn. He starts wrestling rougher and more disrespectfully from that point, even throwing headbutts late in the match. Huge moment at the end when Misawa kicks out of a backdrop. He tries to go back to the elbow, but Jumbo cuts him off with a monster lariat and puts him away with a bridging backdrop. If the June match showed that Misawa couldn’t be taken lightly, this one established him as a peer even in losing. Both matches are close to equal, but I prefer the former one by the slimmest of margins because the big moments in it stand out as bigger to me even though Misawa was more comfortable working as a heavyweight in September. ****3/4 Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Kenta Kobashi vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue/Masanobu Fuchi (AJPW, 10/19/90) This is the first six-man with the classic lineup, and it’s my favorite of the bunch. It provides the most bang for the buck with 25 minutes of action and violence without a trace of downtime. It helps that all the players are established in their respective roles. Jumbo and Misawa are the leaders of their squads. Fuchi is the aging junior technician who can’t take on the young heavies straight-up but can do plenty of damage after they’ve been softened up. Taue is his side’s designated cheapshot artist/punching bag. Kawada is Misawa’s #2 and has made it his mission to make Taue’s life a living hell. Kobashi is the fresh-faced youngster trying to prove that he can hang with the big boys. This match is best-known for the work on Kobashi’s broken nose, including Fuchi ramming a chair into Kobashi’s face, but the setup is just as impressive. When Kobashi has Taue in a half crab, Fuchi tries to break it up by punching Kobashi in the face. When the referee orders Fuchi out of the ring, Jumbo comes in to finish the job, but Kobashi cuts him off with a lariat. A couple minutes later, Jumbo comes in off a tag and breaks Kobashi’s nose with the mother of all receipts. Jumbo’s lariat is now established as a killer move, so Kawada ducking one and countering with a spin kick gets a huge reaction. Speaking of Kawada, Taue knocking him off the apron at the beginning is paid off when Kawada runs in to break up a Taue abdominal stretch. A little bit later, the two are brawling on the outside and Kawada tries to slam Taue on the floor, but Taue turns the tables and ends up slamming Kawada. But they’re still not done, as Kawada would end up suplexing Taue on the floor. Building up and delivering on multiple simultaneous storyline threads, with plenty of twists and turns along the way, is what makes these matches tick. Body part work in these matches tends to be filler, so it was awesome to see Jumbo pay off the earlier rib work on Misawa by cutting him off late with knees to the gut. Matches hardly ever deliver on as many levels as this one. ***** Steiners vs. Nasty Boys (WCW, 10/27/90) These are two teams who are at their best when they have free rein to take liberties with their opponents, and since neither side is afraid to dish it out or take it, this is a match made in heaven. It also has a lot more structure than a typical Steiner Brothers match. There are a few moments when the tension boils over, but for the most part, the wrestlers wait until the referee’s back is turned to unleash real mayhem (Rick whacking Sags with a chair especially stands out). The Nasty Boys working over Scott’s back was sound strategy even though their bearhugs and camel clutches weren’t exactly the stuff of a highlight reel. The finish shouldn’t have counted since Scott wasn’t the legal man, but I don’t believe in penalizing the wrestlers for the incompetence of the referee. Then again, with the way Knobbs got spiked on the frankensteiner, I can’t blame the ref for wanting to wrap it up. ****1/4 El Hijo del Santo vs. Brazo de Oro (UWA, 1/13/91) This is by far my favorite Santo apuestas match. In fact, for me, it stands alongside MS-1/Sangre Chicana as an exemplar of the style. It does deviate from the usual formula in that Santo is simply dominated straight-up in the first fall rather than falling victim to a Pearl Harbor job as Oro delivers a Hansen-tier beatdown with body shots, knees, and headbutts. Santo bleeding through his mask makes for a striking visual, although I’d rather not think about how he makes it happen. I greatly enjoyed Santo collapsing in exhaustion after his comeback sequence, making it a temporary burst of adrenaline as opposed to simple no-selling. Long-term selling usually isn’t much of a priority in lucha, but it’s always nice to see. After Oro gets busted open, his second Brazo de Plata wraps a towel around his head to stem the bleeding. Santo wrapping the bloody towel around his fist and then punching Oro in the face was an awesome spot. Other than that, my favorite spot of the third fall was Oro’s Greg Valentine-esque elbow drop. I also really liked Santo’s double stomp followed by a swanton bomb. Some of the transitions in the third fall were kind of wonky, but this was close to perfect otherwise. ****3/4

I can't think of any promotion that was good about having monster faces because monster faces inherently suck, at least as week-in week-out characters. There's a reason guys like Andre the Giant and Haystacks Calhoun were primarily touring special attractions. More to the point, look at Brock Lesnar, who is better than Braun in every way. He's a larger-than-life megastar whose every appearance is treated as a huge deal. He delivers a MOTYC virtually every time he steps in the ring, shows enough vulnerability to get fans into his matches while still retaining his aura as an unstoppable killer, and never sticks around long enough to wear out his welcome. And yet just about everybody seems to be sick of him, including a good chunk of the posters on this board. What do you think the reaction would be if someone far less talented was doing the same shit but was on TV every week?

I checked out the Britt Baker promo, and yikes. Heel Baker might actually be worse than face Baker. She made Baron Corbin look like Superstar Billy Graham. A complete dynamo of anti-charisma.