PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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I was mostly underwhelmed by this, though this turns into a good match thanks to a hot closing stretch and a satisfying ending with Inoue picking up a huge win. Before the home stretch, this may as well have been a four corners match for how little continuity there was between each team, as evidenced by the absolutely eye-rolling triple sleeper. I don't want to say these four women took it easy for the night, but this was clearly worked at a step or three behind their usual pace. And, surprise surprise, it's a 1996 joshi match with heat so mostly nonexistent that it has to be acknowledged. Pretty good match but there are myriad better performances from all four of these ladies you can find elsewhere. -
I didn't have a clue how this was going to end up when I first saw these 8 people in one match, but it ended up being a load of fun. There were probably 6 or 7 spots that would have made Bill Watts see red, but in this context they worked. Even the tired arm-pump spot led somewhere, as Delfin's female teammates initially turned on him, only for it to be a set-up on Sasuke & Tiger Mask. Great build to the initial female-vs.-male showdown as well--and other than a trip and Delfin bodyslamming Fukuoka, the man-on-woman violence is minimal, whereas the woman-on-man violence is abundant. One of the better hidden gems of any Yearbook--the old comedy spots looked fresh in a new setting and there was some new stuff to go with the Lucharesu's Greatest Hits match layout.
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I don't want to sell Patriot too short--his offense looked pretty good and I think he's a guy who tends to come off as too light for AJPW. Really liked his and Doc's struggle for him to apply the full nelson slam towards the end, too. Still, I think we can all agree that Kobashi was the best guy of the 4 at drawing sympathy...even if one could question a Triple Crown champion working that way.
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Slow start to this--not the usual Doc/Gordy/Ace kind of slow with a lot of laying in holds. Just deliberate. And there's good stuff to be found, like the little football tackle dick-waving contest between Doc and Patriot. This picks up and turns into a hell of a match, with a closing stretch that wouldn't be totally out of place among the great early-'90s All-Japan tags. Kobashi works as sort of the juniory, in-peril member of the team, which I could see being a source of criticism, but...well, that's what Kobashi does. And while Patriot is fine, he's best served as an apron cheerleader who just comes in to hit his big spots. There's lots of neat counter-wrestling in between all the big bombs and some cool double-teams. It's probably too long to have been included on a pretty loaded Yearbook in full but this is probably the best AJPW match not to make the cut.
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Yeah, apropos of the "carrying" discussion in the main section...some might want to say that applied here, but I dunno. I suppose Kikuchi could get credit for "holding this together" but RVD seems like the more dynamic worker and he's the more over guy in the match, at least by the closing stretch. He hits most of what he does with a minimum of RVD sloppiness and meandering, and what sloppiness is there is covered for nicely. This had a slow start punctuated by RVD's unique moves, with a pretty hot finishing stretch where Kikuchi steps his game up some even though he's clearly far from what he once was in terms of energy and speed. I find it amazing and more than a bit scary that he was a full-timer in NOAH for another 14 years after this.
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I wouldn't want Muto to be like this all the time, but in occasional doses against the right opponent it works perfectly. Muta even gets to show the value of an American learning excursion, with his interactions with the referee when it comes to his foreign object usage. Tenryu really makes this with his incredible punches and comeback.
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The real October Giants: Also, on a more productive note for Parv: Dory & Kikuchi vs. Taue & Akiyama.
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Hat tip to Dylan for pimping this on Twitter. I'm going to have to re-evaluate the Satanico/Pirata Morgan match from 11/26--I had that as the #9 Match of the Year worldwide and the top-ranking lucha match, and I think this compares favorably. This is every bit of the war you'd want to see between these two--I don't know if both are rudos (though Casas is the crowd favorite) but it doesn't much matter. Both guys happily beat the living shit out of the other and both guys provide some great sympathetic selling. Each fall gets time to breathe, and Casas is absolutely unreal working both on top and underneath. He takes an awesome bump over like 3 rows of ringside seats, and his kicks and comebacks are out of this world great. This is about as stiff and high-impact as lucha gets, and I think works great as a match to watch for people who aren't into lucha. The third fall also has a great running story of who can make their high-risk move attempt pay off first, like a lucha title match. Both guys miss at first and you know it's going to come down to who can be the first to hit their top-rope move. Even some really great lucha matches don't always have three good finishes for each fall, but here each fall works.
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Vince's almost never-seen half-brother was supposed to be at that show, too. Since I'm approaching that time period in my Yearbook-viewing, i regret that Baba either never could close or try to close a deal to bring Nobuhiko Takada into AJPW in late '96, a move that would have given the promotion a needed shot in the arm. I'm not sure just how good Takada vs. Misawa or Kobashi would actually be, but they'd be big money matches and he and Kawada could have brought the Budokan house down.
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Wait, I thought Sasuke was out of These Days because of the skull injury, but he's wrestling a singles match a night later? Okay, whatever. Good Lord, but this crowd is psychotic. Rey and Psic basically received polite applause but the audience is just losing their shit over this. It's a good match and of course Sasuke is making a brave comeback, but it was a little surprising to hear. I liked this well enough and I'm a guy who's way down on earlier Dragon and current Sasuke. I really liked Dragon dropping Sasuke on his head with a DDT to legitimate crowd heat--about damned time Asai learned some character work. This didn't wear out its welcome, either, which is often a big flaw with these type matches. Pretty good juniors match but the crowd is something else, and it elevates this to something a little more special.
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This felt like that Rock 'n Rolls-Midnights Clash match where they decided to do all new spots, just to push themselves. There's some familiar stuff here but there's a lot of new stuff too--some of it successful, some of it not. It's rare to see Rey and Psic not on the same page, but that actually happens at times--particularly with that weird deal on the ring apron with one of the two audibly swearing at the timing. Actually getting raw audio of these two in the ring is one of the big highlights. Rey wins with a lucha-ized variation of a Billy Robinson/Johnny Saint/Dory Funk spot, and thank God for changing that, at least. This isn't a high watermark of the feud by any means but it was a good change of pace just when one may have been starting to adopt a "seen it" mentality to this series.
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There's not much more to say about this. As the DVDVR guys put it, it's spot-fu, but it's the greatest spot-fu match of all-time. Actually I don't know if that statement is strictly true, but it's got an argument. It's another top-10/15 MOTYC in what's turning into an excellent year for MOTYCs. It's just a shame that Sasuke couldn't have been here--then again, maybe that means Yakushiji is the man out and we wouldn't have wanted that.
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Chris Masters, though he arguably falls in the Show/Henry category. My pet perfection: guys wrestling for extended periods while still in their entrance gear, and guys doing wrestling moves in street-clothes--even better if it's a suit or a tux.
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This was a good angle but it would have had more impact if we hadn't seen about 30 Savage beatdowns already. From a kayfabe standpoint he had maybe the shittiest year of any main eventer in history. We also get some trademark Kevin Sullivan read-between-the-lines stuff, as it's supposed to be implied that the Nasty Boys are being used to distract security or head off help. Just a shot of them chaining the locker room door or something would have been appreciated instead of us having to figure this out and assuming the entire WCW locker room is a bunch of chumps. I don't know how anyone could possibly have expected Savage to win at Havoc.
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"It's been almost 15 months since Jarrett slithered away from the spotlight in shame." SO WHY THE FUCK ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT HIM? (He asked rhetorically).
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Good stuff that would all be for naught.
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There's still some typical mid-'90s cheesiness here but this was definitely a more intense and personal promo from Undertaker than we'd been used to seeing.
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This felt like AJW as booked by the WWF. Lots and lots and LOTS of playing to the crowd by Aja, and then we delve into finisher-trading and countering like a modern-day WWE main event. Aja gradually grinding Manami into dust with holds in the beginning was really good, but the blown spots and awkward set-ups from Aja as noted above take this down in a big way. Even the finish is way more WWF-like than AJW. That's not in and of itself bad, but a lot of this isn't even *good* WWF main event-style work. It's striking how far AJW has fallen in '96.
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Yeah, this doesn't work when it's almost all Styles, as he hypes both the 10/5 and 10/26 ECW Arena shows. I question the Doc/Gordy-Eliminators match being "the most historically significant match in the history of the ECW Arena." Spike Dudley has debuted--I had no idea he was around this early. While the ridiculous hype train is running, Styles laughably attempts to pass off a rather tepid Buh Buh Ray vs. D-Von brawl as the most extreme in ECW's history. Main event is an Ultimate Jeopardy tag match: if Brian Lee gets pinned, he loses his hair. If Raven gets pinned, he loses his ECW title. If Sandman gets pinned, he gets ten lashes with the cane. And if Tommy Dreamer gets pinned, Beulah must leave ECW.
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Nash on the Fake Sting: "He's the best impostor in professional wrestling!" Ha. He also compares Bill Murray to Ross Perot, a resemblance I don't really see. Hall asks Nasty Nick Hogan if he likes race cars--ooh, that's a line that seems different in hindsight. The Nasty Boys show up, and the Giant has joined us. Saggs does the Ace Ventura butt-talking bit in impersonation of Eric Bischoff, which I understand real-life Eric was NOT amused by. Kyle Petty is here as the Nasty Boys stuff themselves. Hogan cuts a promo on Randy Savage. Now Liz is with us and doesn't seem to be enjoying it. Giant points out that Hogan is getting him movie roles even though he can't act. Giant did have a planned role in Liar, Liar that got cut. I don't think Hulk could get Brad Pitt or Kevin Costner, though. Really good wrap-up to this, as Liz makes her way out of the hotel room only to be confronted by a psychotic Randy Savage in the hallway. I agree that this angle is starting to make sense in hindsight, but the problem is I don't think the announcers ever actually elaborated on what the hell was going on, and we had to make it out ourselves. That's not the easiest thing to do in ideal circumstances, but many viewers were rapidly bouncing back and forth between Raw and Nitro making it even more difficult. We can criticize the WWF Sledgehammer of Plot but sometimes it's a necessary evil.
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Thing is they were teasing things already with Bischoff going "missing" a few times, so maybe they were just sitting on the turn with it in their back pocket for the right time. Bischoff invoking the names of Lou Thesz and Pat O'Connor just seems weird coming from Bischoff, even if it's effective for the promo. I did like Eric admitting that his worst mistake was bringing Hogan into the company.