dawho5
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Everything posted by dawho5
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Here's what I love about Fujiwara so far in 1990. He's like an old martial arts teacher. He is clearly physically declining and not able to stand toe-to-toe with the Maedas, Takadas or even the Yamazakis of the world. But he's got this massive bag of tricks that nobody comes close to matching. So he'll use his body and head movement to make stuff miss the mark. And he'll do that to bait guys into bigger things and make themselves more off-balance. And he's patient on the mat, he'll take a little pain to find a counter-submission that sticks. Also, he's very good at controlling his opponent's momentum. Yamazaki is really good at mixing trying to get in on Fujiwara with strikes and trying to catch him with a submission, finally getting one that Fujiwara has to go to the ropes for. Fuji comes back swinging, which plays into Yamazaki's strength and it pays off for Yamazaki. But not before Fujiwara takes a powder to slow Yamazaki's momentum, even if it didn't work. I really dig Fujiwara as this formidable guy because he can catch you off-guard in so many different ways. He's not going to wow you with big anything. He'll just sneakily get you into a spot where you are all of a sudden in trouble when it looked like you were in charge.
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I thought this was an interesting match because it was a better version of Takada vs. Fujiwara. That one had Takada as the younger guy going against the more experienced veteran Fujiwara and having to use his stand up striking to counter Fujiwara's advantage on the ground. Here that story works better with Takada actually having better, but different stand-up. Anjo is clearly the quicker of the two on his feet and tries to use that to get the upper hand on Takada. But Takada knows when and how to counter when Anjo leaves himself open during his flurries. So it's not truly an advantage he can go to. Anjo also takes a lot more chances with risky submission attempts to try and surprise Takada, which gets him caught more often than not. I liked this better than the Maeda squash. Anjo never had a chance, sure, but at least Takada gave him quite a bit more than Maeda gave Nakano.
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Haynes turning on Oregon is pretty incredible. After watching the Portland set I wondered how he could ever go heel in Portland. Also, him turning on Rip Oliver and his son is all kinds of poetic. The promo could have been executed with a bit more...professionalism I guess. But I don't think Billy Jack was ever the best promo, so I'll give him this one.
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Good shoot-y striker vs grappler to start. Then we go into ECW style arena dragging. That made me pay attention for sure. Both guys get bloodied up and try to put each other away with big, stiff bombs. Then when they both stay down for the count, some asshole comes out to call them pussies and tell them how they should still be fighting. My guess is this guy is some kind of hero of bloodbath type slugfests, and I hope he is or he's got no business being out there. The restart takes way too long and it's probably because both guys are legitimately gone. Good desperation slugfest as both guys are tripping over themselves for maybe a minute. Then they both get dragged to the back while the asshole tells us how great either his promotion or those two guys are. Strange, strange stuff, definitely one that sticks with you.
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Buzz is awesome with his crazy grunts. I want Sullivan's idea of them as tweeners who just mess with everyone.
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