dawho5
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Everything posted by dawho5
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This goes too long and has some pretty excessive stuff. That being said, Tanaka stopping his outside working over of Taguchi to flirt with a girl in the front row is gold. Taguchi getting his arm worked over is pretty good. Taguchi's selling and comeback (initially) are pretty good as well. The very end of the match brings it all back together again and it is a good finish, but it doesn't save the match for me. Too many one counts and too much no-selling of big moves during the finishing sequence. Minoru really needs to stop using that head kick finish in big matches. The fans and anyone else watching know the armbar is where it's at and nothing else is going to get the job done. Unless they actually booked him to win with t a few times in big matches, but that's kinda doubtful. Also, they almost got through a match without a meaningless elbow exchange. Almost. -
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This was pretty good. Triple Crown match between NJPW and AJPW so I'm 99.9% sure Suzuki doesn't lose. They skip the standard low-end opening stuff and go right to fireworks. Suzuki and Nagata both get busted open from chairshots outside (blade jobs). I liked Nagata's countering the early sleeper with an arm breaker. Good use of his own moveset as an on-the-fly counter. Suzuki gets the crap beaten out of him by Nagata in grand fashion. Then they go into a long slap exchange-based section of the match that makes me hate that this became so commonplace. Up until that point, it was a great match. Nagata eventually comes out on top and hits a big brainbuster, following up with a backdrop. Covers for 1,2,...pulls Suzuki up??? Apparently Suzuki's mind games and dickishness have more long-term useful effects, namely pissing off the opponent to the point that they do stupid things. Neat little detail they worked in I thought, especially given Nagata's penchant for getting pissed off. Suzuki gets the sleeper on, but Nagata is struggling to get an armbreaker. Nagata can't quite get to that point this time and passes out in the sleeper. Really good finish that plays off of the personalities of both guys. And the entire match seems to be built around Suzuki not being able to match Nagata's firepower, but being wily and willing to break the rules enough to get in the damage he needs to. I really like matches like this, where they take that sort of dynamic and build the match on that rather than doing the standard big match epic build. I'd give this right around 75 due to the slap exchange nonsense.
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This was a pretty standard 6-man from DG it seemed. The idea looked to be putting over Shingo, but I'm still not sold on him as a wrestler. CIMA is using a more martial arts gimmick now, still with the dickish stuff though. Saito was fun, but I like watching him. Hulk and Yokosuka play good in-peril guys for their teams. Kong is fun as the little big man. His corner splash is grrreat. Finishing run was chaotic fun up until the end when Shingo completely nosells a dragon suplex, Saito's finisher, so he can put him away. Terrible booking.
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So there is a major NJPW match without Chono at ringside so we can cut to him anytime a submission is applied? Well, color me surprised. As for the match, it seems like Koji might be questioning Tanahashi's cred as the future ace or something, but I don't understand Japanese. Opening moments are pretty even. Koji offers a handshake. Then kicks the crap out of Tanahashi. For the better part of 25 minutes. Tanahashi gets in 5 moves, hits a dragon suplex and wins. HUH? How exactly does booking your future ace getting his ass handed to him by a junior (your top junior, sure, but a junior?) for 20 out of 25 minutes help? Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems really out of place. Also, the strike exchange near the end was terrible. But you know, the beatdown of Tanahashi was mostly good as Koji seemed to enjoy punting him around the ring. So I guess not a complete waste.
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The key to this whole match is the guy you've never heard of. Yamamoto being so far below both of his opponents is the engine that makes this match go. Takayama and Suzuki do a great job of heeling it up just enough while beating the youngster up. Suzuki in particular is really great, as is the odd chemistry between Suzuki and Takayama. Nagata as the force of nature coming in to save Yamamoto is pretty damn good too. Both the heels make him look great. Suzuki vs. Nagata gets fun, as Nagata starts throwing Suzuki's "messing with your head" spots right back in Suzuki's face. Which sets off Suzuki, who goes into the prideful slaps back and forth mode, which is completely out of character. Then he and Nagata both go back into messing-with-your-head mode in the middle of it. That is a great little curveball. Nagata is cruising and looks like he may be able to put the finishing touches on Takayama, but Yamamoto wants a piece of the big man. Nagata does the right thing and TAGS IN the youngster. The rest is really fun and a nice way to finish this match. I liked how everybody involved kept the match going in a pretty straight line from beginning to end. This wasn't the greatest match ever, but the structure and coherent storytelling were more definitely enough to get this in my bottom 25 or a bit higher.
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There's a lot going on here. Takayama and Omori are feuding, I guess Omori is jealous that people figured out he wasn't near as good as Takayama. Murakamai and Yokoi are feuding, and it seems like Ohtani and Sato might have a little beef too. First few minutes are just Omori and Takayama hitting each other back and forth. Best Takayama vs. Omori stuff is just after this when neither is the legal man. No real heat segment, just a short 6-man with lots of rivalry-based dickishness thrown back and forth. Good heat, but the match lacks any sort of flow or direction. They set up the finish pretty well for that, but I won't be voting for it. Watching Takayama use the railing to double stomp Omori over and over was worth the watch though.
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Early and mid-match were really good. Both worked smart and kept it simple. Then it falls apart for me. Danielson does a big dive and hurts his knee. He makes it exceedingly obvious that his knee was hurt during that dive. KENTA...decides we're going into a suplex nearfall sequence. Danielson is still selling the knee, and KENTA's one move that targets it is the Texas cloverleaf. Then we move on to more nearfalls. Actual finish and the few moves leading directly up to it was pretty god, but once again the need for big suplex nearfalls when the match had another perfectly logical way to go kills me.
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TARU is wearing a shirt that reads HEEL. And he likes to throw water bottles at the crowd after dumping the water on his opponents, so I guess it's appropriate. SUWA makes it his mission in life to piss off Akira Taue while Mushiking Terry is being beaten to a pulp. Taue finally has enough, but the heel team is all over him and four on one gets to him. Justice has been denied, but the match isn't over. Chaos leads to Taue tagged in against....TARU??? Well, he's got some payback coming too, so let's watch the fun. More chaos after a bit of fun and then Taue is in the ring against...SUWA!!! SUWA gets some shots and a nearfall in, but you know taue isn't going down to a chump like SUWA. Especially not after all the antagonizing that's been going on. Crowd blows the roof off of the building when SUWA gets his comeuppance. Fun 8 man that ends when it should and plays out like it ought to. It may get a vote near the very bottom, but it's definitely a worthwhile watch.
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This was a beautiful wrestling match. Two out of three falls. Intense early exchange leads to a quick fall for Nishimura. Fujinami is on the defensive and Nishimura picks apart the left arm. It's clear from the start that Fujinami wants to go after Nishimura's leg, and he finally starts to get some work done on it in a very cool way (within the match). Nishimura comes up with some excellent (in context, again) counters to the legwork. It's no dice for Nishimura as the fall ends with Fujinami evening things up in a fashion that leaves little hope for Nishimura. Fujinami has an injury that needs tending in between falls, one that Nishimura can attack. The desperation stuff by Nishimura during the last fall is so awesome. The highspot of the match is a teased suplex off the apron as Nishimura gets cut off by Fujinami trying to get back in the ring. Nishimura lets his pride get the better of him very near the end. Can he weather the storm and pull out one of his flash victory-from-the-jaws-of-defeat moments or will Fujinami put him away? Nishimura's selling of the leg throughout is so very incredible. As are his elbows. And Fujinami's dynamic change from early to mid-match is really great. I love the way these two adapt so fluidly, but never at a pace that suggests a lack of struggle. This is a firm number 2 for me. Sorry Akira Taue, but the awesome simplicity and execution of this match trump NOAH style any day of the week..
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Early match was pretty well-worked. They got across that Tanahashi was easily overpowered, but had a speed advantage and is a technician. They did spend a little too much time working the New Japan matwork for the sake of matwork stuff, but that's a style quibble. The mini-heat segment on Tanahashi was a nice twist on an old idea. Nakamura gets a lot of counters to Tanahashi's hope spots that lead to setup moves for Nakamura's finishers. It shows that Nakamura himself is no slouch as a technician, despite having the power advantage as well as being something a little different. The finishing run was not badly worked, it seemed to come out of the heat segment pretty naturally and keep in line with the established roles. Several problems for me. First, nakamura hits a reverse powerslam that looks like Tanahashi should be done or just about done and he kicks out. Okay, just about done. Then he goes immediately into a tiger suplex that Tanahashi also kicks out of. There's too much of this in 2000s puro and I don't like how stuff that should be killer is tossed to the side as just a nearfall. Then Tanahashi hits a sweet exploder/uranage thing to set up a...sling blade. I think the sling blade looks cool, but the exploder is the nearfall here, not the sling blade. Why set up a weaker-looking move with a really big one? Otherwise, I thought the finish was intelligently worked and I think this still manages to be in the 90-100 range.
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Yet another instance of an outsider coming in and freshening up NOAH. Shibata wants a piece of Taue right away and gets more than he bargained for. Including Taue doing a Karate Kid pose! Taue isn't overly interested in messing with Shibata, so he tags in Shiozaki. Shiozaki seems to be doing well enough until he puts down KENTA (the legal man) and Shibata does a slippery routine on the apron before locking Shiozaki up in a sleeper. Great heat segment as the two kick-happy juniors mess with Taue in multiple ways while putting the beatdown on Shiozaki. Taue finally gets the tag and it seems like the de-facto heels may get the better of him as well, but he's a crafty old veteran and also much bigger. Taue has Shibata right at the point of being put away and hands it to Shiozaki. Finish is pretty damn good, fits well with the rest of the match and ends when it seems like it should. Taue doing his part and getting out of the way was really sweet. Shiozaki seems like he deserves a lot more time to shine than he gets and Taue wasn't going to take any of that away. I would say that Shiozaki is the centerpiece of this match and that is what makes it work. He's not quite on the level of Shibata and a step below KENTA, so small victories that are hard-fought become big things for him. And I like his more simple-but-effective wrestling style over the KENTAfuji flip/kick/springboard-to-pop-the crowd style. Also, Shibata brings a certain...otherness to him that rivals Minoru Suzuki. He's just got his own way of doing things that seems a bit different and tends to make matches more interesting.
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Or you could work like the WCCW deal. How the Von Erichs were always faces and the Freebirds were heels against them but faces against the...I forget what they are called, but the group of oddball psychos, who were always the heel regardless.
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I feel like I come off as a grumpy old bastard in most of them. Then again, most of what I watch seems...excessive beyond where it is acceptable. I have ideas on how that came to be, but that's a different thread I have planned for after the whole thing is done. Need to set aside about an hour to do something specific and then work off of that to put all my thoughts in order on the matter. Will certainly send my ballot your way.
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I think you guys are forgetting that you don't need to act like a face to be a face. Remember Austin during the Attitude Era? He did all the same stuff he had done as a heel, but the crowd loved him and he got cheers for it. Like was mentioned earlier, put him up against heels and have him do the same stuff he did as a heel. With a little of that teasing of what the fans want.
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Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It seems like some of the highlighted matches are as much for name value as anything else. Others are more the "big" company main event type matches where Nishimura vs. Saito from MUGA just seems way less mainstream, even if I think it's better.
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Been doing the 2000-2009 puro thing, so this is gonna be heavily weighted towards that. Current Favorite Wrestler to Watch: Akira Taue. His 2004-2006 have been incredible. Kobashi, Akiyama and Marufuji all have their best matches in NOAH against him. Hell, I think the best Nagata match I've seen was his match vs. Taue. Last Fun Match You Saw: Minoru Suzuki vs. Kenta Kobashi 2005. Suzuki takes Kobashi out of his usual schtick and forces him to work small instead of big. Love when Kobashi works small and Suzuki is incredible. Stuff like him initiating a slap exchange with Kobashi when he won't give up the arm willingly, just to snatch it once Kobashi starts slapping is all kinds of awesome. Wrestler You Want to See More of: Minoru Suzuki. He's great at the little things that make a match work and brings a completely different feel than any other puroresu guy I've seen. Works incredibly smart. Last Live Show You've Attended: Been a while. The Thunder in Fargo, ND when DDP, Sting, nash and Goldberg had a 4 way match. DDP was such a chickenshit heel in that match too. Match You are Looking Forward to Watching Soon the Most: Ishikawa/Otsuka/Sawa vs. Ikeda/Usuda/Super Tiger 2 2008. Love me some Battlarts and it's the one style not represented very well in the 2000s. Can't wait for the resurgence of one of my favorite Japanese promotions. Last Fun Interview/Promo You Saw: Ric Flair going nuts on Orton/Slater after they took Race's bounty on him. Man did Flair knock that one out of the park after the very low-key "retirement" thing he had done earlier. Last Interesting Thing You Read About Pro Wrestling: Daniel Bryan getting his due was pretty cool for me to read about. I like that the WWE is willing to at least on the surface change to fit the reactions their wrestlers get. Last Worthwhile Wrestling Podcast You Heard: Between working, training and sleeping, most of what I do now is watch wrestling and a few movies. Podcasts sound fun, but sneaking in some time to listen to the music I love between all of that is more important. Most Fun You've Had Watching Wrestling Lately: Ikeda vs. Ishikawa from Futen in 2005. I mentioned how I love BatBat and it's a more brutal variation on the style. That match blew my mind with the stiffness. That they kept what they did up for almost 20 minutes is insane.
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Early match gives me hope. They seem to have some idea of how to build up a match without doing overlong amounts of time-wasting. KENTA working over Marufuji's ribs is really, really good. Marufuji does this moonsault off the top into the crowd in an attempt to kill himself. Which comes a few inches from succeeding. And ends up busting KENTA open because he hits him with his shin/knee. The match goes completely off the rails during the finishing run. It's just big bombs, some of which are very cool to watch. They do some good teases in there, but too much time spent popping the crowd, getting the big nearfall and laying around. I question whether or not they are still tag partners after this match too. some of the early stuff was pretty vicious to be doing to your tag partner.
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Takayama is starting to look a little old. He comes through big in a couple of spots, but he's here for name recognition mostly it seems. Sugiura gets a few "strength" spots against the big guys early and it's cool. But they pile on with this and it becomes a little tired by the time it's done. The Takeshi's seem most at home working heat segments on smaller guys. The thing that gets me about this match is the one guy who has been in great matches with good finishing runs wasn't heavily involved in the last ten minutes. Finish is just a collection of impressive-looking stuff that doesn't ever coalesce. Somebody is gonna have to explain to me how guys with lariat finishers don't take a berak on the lariats for the majority of the match. Makes their finishers seem less effective and...the finishing version lacks that "cut above the rest of the moves" feeling to it.
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The early parts of this match were really, really good. Kanemoto tries to strike with Nagata, who really has upped his game since I last watched a match of his. Nagata kicks Koji's ass all over the ring for a good while. Koji gets some hope spots, going to the leg easily being the strongest. Then Kanemoto finally gets his big opening and he....goes into "I'm hitting all my spots" mode instead of working within the match and attacking the leg for all he's worth. Nagata hits moves that should put Koji away, but he kicks out anyway. Koji finally gets his big legwork segment that you knew was coming all along and it's good, but it's after the match should be over. Nagata takes advantage of Kanemoto getting cocky and hits the backdrop, but he's not able to cover in time to finish and you just know this is going to a draw. And whaddya know, there's the bell while nothing interesting is going on. A lot of the late nearfalls looked thrown together and without meaning. They had a really good underdog match with Koji doing great work during his heat segment, then pissed the match down their leg. Edit: Just to make a point about why "big finishing runs" are not necessary, here's how my finish goes. Koji attacks the leg after Nagata misses the corner knee. For a while. Without using the anklelock. He gets cocky, goes back to Koji mode and tries the moonsault to prove a point. Nagata gets out of the way or catches him on the ropes, whatever. Nagata hits some big elbows and an exploder. He can't get the cover right away because of the leg and Koji barely kicks out despite that. Nagat starts elbowing Koji again. who throws elbows back. Nagata gets into the exchange and Koji goes low with a dropkick. More legwork. This time, though, Koji isn't interested in anything else. Koji tries the anklelock, but Nagata is a step ahead and turns it around into the Nagatalock 3 (crossface). Koji scrambles to the ropes, Nagata follows up and looks like he may get the backdrop, but Koji backflips out and goes to the knee again. Selling by Koji before going back to the leg. Nagata's spirit kicks in after a while and he gets the big backdrop hold. But his leg gives out on the bridge. Koji is down & out, but Nagata is struggling to get him up becaus of the leg. Nagata starts blasting Kanemoto with non-kick strikes and has him leaning on the ropes barely standing. He pauses to tell the crowd he's going for the backdrop again. Koji explodes off the ropes and hits a low dropkick. He grabs the anklelock, but Yuji is grabbing the ropes. Koji tears Nagata off the ropes, falling down in the process, barely able to actually get the anklelock on because of it. Nagata is scrambling for the ropes, but Kanemoto pulls him back to the center and re-applies the hold. Nagata is on his way to the ropes and...bell. It tells the same story as the beginning of the match, is compelling, puts Koji over in a way that in no way degrades Nagata because his big setup weapon (kicks) is being attacked, AND sets up a rematch. Nobody's finisher looks weak, both look like they wrestled a smart match. I honestly don't get the need for just throwing bombs in a match when you could do something like this.
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How are we 20 posts in and 6/3/94 has yet to be mentioned specifically? Super J Cup 94 was pretty fun as well. I need to watch the finals and the semis again to see if they hold up. Didn't watch WCW or WWF at the time. I really want to hit WCW from 1989 on, but that's a massive project and I have other stuff on the table first.
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Youtube link was disabled due to AJPW. Honestly, from a highlight video I saw, it looks like the nearfalls were as overdone and way too much as any NOAH match just for the sake of the crowd reactions. May come back to this and look for full match but it doesn't seem like it would be worth my time.
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Starts off good. Rikio and Marufuji work some really nice exchanges and Rikio works a good headlock. Then Morishima dn KENTA decide to sprint to an early finisher tease by Morishima. Which somehow leads to a Morishima heat segment that isn't bad. Mostly not overdone by either of the two juniors. Then we end up with a KENTA heat segment, which blows the Morishima one out of the water for obvious reasons. Finishing run is filled with big moves and lots of lariats and crowd popping, but not much structure or reason. There's certainly lots of fun stuff to watch. Rikio comes off great. Morishima is still a big dude with lots of heavy hitting moves who doesn't seem to know how to use them. KENTA comes off as a tough little guy who can do some damage. And Marufuji works smart more than he overdoes things. Just the match itself was all over the place. Won't be getting my vote, but some of it is really good.
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This was a great, great match. Nishimura is incredible at matwork and takedowns. Also has wicked elbows. Saito looks to be a big bruiser with some technical skill. They work great long standing surfboard and headlock sequences. Saito looks to have an advantage when he starts beating on Nishimura, but Nishimura does this nifty takedown to the outside from just inside the ropes. Saito's leg hits wrong on the fall and Nishimura pounces. Can Nishimura finish Saito off by taking advantage of the leg injury or will the bigger man be able to physically dominate him to get the pinfall? Good story, excellent work. Also, and this is important....simplicity itself. This match makes extremely simple moves into highspots and it works. Easily top 20. Add a heated rivalry to this kind of match and it's probably number 1.
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And people wonder why I hate NOAH. Try watching Kobashi vs. Misawa or Akiyama and see how long it takes you to hate the match.