dawho5
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Everything posted by dawho5
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Yeah, I watched a NOAH match from 2001 earlier tonight. Well, several, but the Vader tag stood out. The head ref was still fairly new and you could tell. He kept having to stop EVERY instance of somebody coming in when not tagged and try to keep the cornered guy from being attacked...every time. Very, loudly to the point where it was distracting. So Vader tosses him all the way across the ring, I think to make a point as well as just have a great spot within the match. -
You're right, ban the suplex! Also, how is every wrestler who throws closed fists the whole match not DQed???
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Wow did this match rule. Taue does this great set of spots where he mimics Marufuji's spots that came just before. Marufuji's flippy stuff comes right where it makes the most sense instead of all the time. The heat segment on Marufuji is great, then we get another amazingly timed (and well-executed) comeback. Finishing run is all kinds of incredible as they tie in the rest of the work and work between all the nearfalls. Finish is great on so many levels. This is my working number 6. 2004-2006 have been the years of Akira Taue.
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I liked this match quite a bit. Once Vader gets tagged in, the Vader vs. Kobashi stuff is really fun. Any time Taue and Akiyama were in the ring together it worked great. The finishing sequence was really well worked. I can see this somewhere on the lower half of my ballot. The finish is all kinds of brutal. Blown Vadersault that ends up being a vicious looking diving headbutt. Edit: Vader tosses the ref all the way across the ring when he gets annoyed with him during the match. Great stuff there. Still not sure this doesn't belong in my top 40 but it'll get a rewatch. Too much Kobashi nonsense to be higher, but it may yet make it higher than 40.
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So glad SS reviewed this because I had foolishly skipped it. Minoru Suzuki is great at heeling it up and doing small things that make a match better. Kobashi can be that way, but he usually needs somebody else who is willing to go that far to bring that out. The headlock sequence is incredible. I've written a lot of negative things about Kobashi, and I'm not taking any of them back. However, the man can work a headlock like few others. I just wish he would do it more. Hell, Kobashi the submission wrestler is incredible. If he went a whole match working mostly submissions, I would mark the fuck out. Back to this match. Suzuki forces Kobashi out of the usual gameplan (shout a lot and throw chops, then do a bunch of big suplexes to pop the crowd). This makes for a much better match, as Kobashi is forced to adapt, which brings out the superworker lurking within. Suzuki gets a nice sleeper out on the ramp, and Kobashi has probably one of the best counters I've ever seen. Crawling off the ramp, plunging both himself and Suzuki to ringside. That was some spectacular stuff. Kobashi finally has enough of Suzuki's shit and backdrops him. A lot. Suzuki does this great attempted nosell and throws some slaps that barely touch Kobashi before falling over. Kobashi knows what to do from there and we're headed home. This is pretty easily in my top 30-40 range. Also, it makes me want to find more Minoru Suzuki when I'm done with this best of the 2000s.
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This was good. Morishima's early offense consists of clubberins and lariats, but it works. Misawa, well, he uses lots of elbows. I thought the match relied too much on bombs, but only by a small margin. Morishima would need to drop tons of bombs to put away Misawa. I'm not a huge fan of the match, but I think it could show up in the 70-75 range. Edit: Morishima is huge in this match. He keeps up with Misawa in the stiff strikes, sells really well, delivers big with the bombs late and bumps his ass off. Also, he goes from the top turnbuckle to the floor. At over 300 pounds that is a feat.
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The finishing run is really good. It is a question of which is going to give out first, AKIRA's arm or Tanaka's leg? Only problem is, Tanaka has worked the leg quite a bit leading into it and AKIRA keeps going up top with no real slowdown from that or selling of it. Most of the match was really enjoyable, but it was about 5 minutes too long. AKIRA's tope is the highlight for me. Either he aimed wrong or Minoru moved, but AKIRA ends up going chest first into the railing with no real slowing of his momentum. Very nasty looking.
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Early parts with Kobashi and Tenryu are once again gold. Sasaki and Kobashi beating the shit out of an old man (he's what, 56 or 57 here?) and an undersized kid for no real purpose, not so much. I get the idea that beating the shit out of the youngsters gets them over in japan, and Nakajima takes the beating of a lifetime here. But I don't think it makes MOTYC or MOTDC caliber matches. Also, I don't particularly care for invincible Sasaki or Kobashi so this match drags for me a lot.
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A few things stand out early. Minoru's gimmick has changed wholesale. He even works the arm in the opening minutes, which is a nice touch. And in 2006, New Japan had small crowds. This is a small building for the BoSJ finals. Match is perfectly fine. TM works over the injured shoulder as expected. Minoru sells it well to the end, but TM needs to go back to it more to get back on offense. Make it look like less of an obvious ploy to get the fans behind Minoru 9which they were already). Finishing run is surprisingly well laid-out. Minoru's gimmick may have changed, but the flash armbar submissions are still there. For whatever reason, the match never really made me care about either Minoru or TM4. They both had perfectly good performances, but I just never got into it.
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I'm not too far from the above review. I liked the lucha hair vs. mask brawl feel to it early. It was chaotic and fun. Then they switched to the standard 6-man chaos finishing run. If you're going to start the match that way, end it the same way. That being said, lots of fun stuff and at times it is incredibly entertaining. It's probably going to make the very bottom of my list. Then again, if enough good matches come up it may not get a vote.
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This match was amazing. I have one small quibble with it, but I'll get to that later. Taue does the opening control segment simple and effective. Love Taue's early match offense and how brutal it looks despite not being anything big. Akiyama's comeback is great for a few reasons. One, it comes a little earlier than expected. Taue seems to like to milk the comeback until right about the point where you figure it was a tease and then take the big opponent comeback. Here it comes right after Akiyama starts fighting back a little more and it catches you off-guard. Secondly, Akiyama's comeback is absolutely brutal. And focused. It's brilliant stuff and Taue taking that first bump at his age should get a fucking medal. And the second big knee is just...that looks like it hurt. The finishing run is incredible. All kinds of momentum shifts in between falls and a few teases of them. My only problem is I think Akiyama should have went right from the first exploder to a front neck lock instead of the nearfall in between. The exploder has been so devalued as a finisher that it needs a lot of setup at this point. Taue's last nearfall is absolutely incredible. He crawls over to Akiyama and drapes an arm over, and you get the sense that if he could just have made a full-on cover he may have had this match. This is a firm number 5 and both Taue and Akiyama at their very best.
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Looked like the point of the match was to get Wagner and Silver King over both as wrestlers and as threats to win a major title. And it did do that, because right towards the end the crowd really got into their bigger nearfalls. It probably won't get a vote, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do. Can't have big title defenses without opponents that the crowd thinks can win the titles off the champs.
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Some good stuff, decent dueling limb work. Lots of outside interference, which works against it. Finish is okay, but it seems like spot fu with some of them blown.
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This plays out like an exhibition to me. It gets across that Minoru has a great armbar for sure. Also, and this is the more definite thing it gets across, Naoki Sano knows lots of submissions and wrestling moves. He knows all about how to properly execute them and they all look real spiffy and nice. What he seems to have missed is allowing for a sense of struggle and selling the leg late in the match. Honestly, I don't understand how this match made the best of 2000. Was it that bad a year?
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This is 15 minutes of these four doing the coolest spots they can think of at the time. Very little rhyme or reason. Some of them were perfectly good spots, just not a match for me.
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This was pretty damn good. Taue gets his ass handed to him early by Morishima in convincing fashion. The comeback is great and the match never loses it's sense of struggle. One thing I miss about the 2000s is a nice, slow build with more building block type moves in the first half than bombs. This match definitely falls in the former category. I do wish Morishima hadn't done 3 pinfall attempts in a row twice during the finishing run. It made it more of a "my bomb, your bomb" style match. Morishima's offense is better than Rikio's, and Taue sells it great. One thing I liked about these matches is Taue putting over the younger generation while still winning. The finish was pretty cool given the trouble Taue has had lifting Morishima. I'd put this just above the Rikio match.
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Yeah, was thinking about this and Hijo del Santo has to be in this discussion. He is an absolutely amazing worker and easily one of the most over workers in his home country ever.
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Between Liger and Mysterio for me. Having a hard time deciding which one I would pick.
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This is an odd match. I like Shibata because he tends to bring out a certain intensity in opponents, and he does here. He also has great offense throughout. Yone's comical overselling works well during his heat segment. He is the weak link with his offense and it's not even overly bad. Just a few things completely whiff is all. Crowd doesn't seem to care even when he does hit it good though. Morishima is all kinds of great on offense with the stiffness and power. And variety. He throws probably the biggest missile dropkick I've ever seen. KENTA, well I think we all know what he does. Thing is, nothing seems to gel even with everybody bringing a good to great performance. Finishing run is all over the place, going from dead to hyper speed back to dead. In addition, it's poorly laid out. Most of the moves hit are big and look great, just nothing comes together as a whole. Won't vote for it, but a good one time watch. Finish is ridiculously brutal. KENTA is a tough little bastard to take that.
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Rikio is pretty limited. He doesn't seem to have much in the way of early match offense. His mid to late match offense is mostly lariats. That being said, Taue gets the most out of every impactful Rikio move the way he sells throughout. He really puts it over that the guy hits like a truck despite having about 5 moves. Taue isn't laying anything in either. Finishing run is mostly worked really smart, with a few quibbles. I didn't like the three backdrop nodowas, but Taue's look of disbelief after the second was only a nearfall was all kinds of awesome. Same for the suplex nodowa. I can't in any kind of seriousness put this in my top 30, but it could barely make 40. Taue got more out of what I saw from Rikio than I would have thought possible. edit: Rikio's turnaround early comes at such an opportune moment. It's another example of the genius of Akira Taue that it happens right there.
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Yeah, Japanese commercials are wacky. I always like when they show up.
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One of the things I love about Battlarts is the constant battle for body position in relation to counters and submissions. And these guys all bring that kind of sensibility to the match, even TM4. The thing about TM4 is, his kicks are one of his weaker offensive weapons. He's got good punches and is really, really good on the mat. So to me, Battlarts is the perfect showcase for him as a good worker. Hidaka is great in this kind of setting, and he and TM4 have some incredible exchanges both on the mat and in standup. His late run with Otsuka is one of the big highlights of the match. Malenko is really great on the mat and gets to show it off a lot. He's got good kicks and knees too, but I really like his matwork. Otsuka is incredible. He brings so many different styles into one package. He'll bust out pro wrestling style suplexes and amateur wrestling takedowns in the same sequence. He's got great headbutts and is a master of well-fought matwork. And (not in this match though) he's got some nice dives. Here he is a suplex and mat wrestling machine. His early deadlift German is absolutely phenomenal. The finish is great as it plays off of the legwork that has been done to Otsuka through most of the match.