ohtani's jacket
DVDVR 80s Project
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Everything posted by ohtani's jacket
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#389 This is such a great match. Easily the best match the Blonds had and far better than anything they did with Steamboat and Douglas. Bagwell and Scorpio were such a fun team. I don't know the story behind them being put together, but they totally made it work. I usually dislike time limit draws but this was an example of how they can be done well. There was so much action going on in the last minute or so and and the show went off the air with everyone left buzzing. -
#397 I've read a lot about Tracy Smothers over the years but haven't seen a lot of him. I've enjoyed the stuff that's made Loss' list so far. The brawling here is pretty good and the ladder spots are suitability restrained. There's the old trope of them struggling to climb the ladder and taking baby steps, and the cheque is way too low for men that big to not just reach up and pull it down, but that's ladder matches for you. I didn't like Candido overselling the bump he took on the missed dive. Thought it would have been better, and more dramatic, if he'd sold it like the wipeout that it was. The ladder did its part selling, though. Nice job selling that limb work during the finish, buddy. I'm surprised this got some traction for US MOTY. Seemed to be missing that extra gear. Perhaps it helps to have watched the lead up.
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#398 This was a great match, possibly Tamura's career best to this point. Yamazaki had a few barn burners like this in UWF-i. There's a lot of beautiful counter wrestling in this and very little wasted motion. I recommend watching the English commentary version if you want to pick up on more of the details. I really liked the finish as it played off Tamura's opening gambit and toyed with the question of whether Tamura was arrogant or not. As it turned out, his unbridled joy at pulling off the win melted away his punk kid attitude and showed how badly he wanted to succeed. Quite a moment in the young man's career and a huge step up in his performances from 1990 and 1991. That's one of the fun things about Tamura. You get to watch him evolve from a rookie to one of the best fighters in the world much like watching players develop in real sports. Love Tamura.
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#399 Loss' list has reacquainted me with Marty Jannetty, that's for sure. Maybe I need to re-watch this but I didn't see it as anything more than a decent television match. The forced storyline of the Double Doinks and what Heenan saw was too much of a distraction for me. Heenan has been hilarious in a lot of the matches I've seen lately, but I don't think the McMahon/Savage/Heenan pairing worked and this was close to Bobby's subpar work in WCW. I was surprised to see the commentary praised here, and lit looks like I didn't pay enough attention to the multiple layers. Trivia question: is this the only match on the list where one of the parts is played by two different workers?
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Matty D delivers! It's a match that pretty much has zero chance of being as good as the first since Fuji and Duggan are involved, but Heenan is hilarious on commentary and carries the match with his back and forth barbs with Hillbilly Jim. Shawn plays FIP in this one, but it's nowhere near as meaningful as Jannetty's performance. Still, Heenan's quips keep things interesting.
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#400 This holds up well. As others have mentioned, it's a hybrid style not unlike a sped up version of BattlARTS, but it's still a Joshi match at heart and has the same frenetic pace as your typical women's match. Yoshida is wonderful in this match. The transformation she made in ARSION was remarkable really. Naoki Sano did something similar when he became a shoot style worker but in many ways Yoshida is more spectacular. In the case of BattlARTS, I've often complained that the hybrid style distracted from the shoot style elements but here Yoshida was almost the perfect blend of shoot style, Joshi and lucha and since I like those three styles I thought it was pretty to watch. Akino went all out and left it all out there. She made a couple of mistakes but it was a heck of an effort on her part and a sprint that was no doubt a blur for a young worker like her. I'm glad I didn't sour on this.
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All right, here we go... June Byers vs. Penny Banner was slightly better stuff from Byers, but it was just highlights so who really knows. Lindy Lawrence vs. Lynn O'Connor was another solid performance from Lawrence. The match wasn't as good as the bout against LaMonte but the focus was on wrestling and not hair pulling, fortunately. The commentator drove me nuts, though. I think he broke some kind of record for how many times you can refer to a wrestler by their full name. And when he wasn't mentioning them by name he was using their nicknames, "Gorgeous" Lindy Lawrence and the "Battling Ballerina" Lynn O'Connor. The full monty was using both and boy did he go for the full monty a lot. Ilio DiPaolo vs. Sato Keomuka was another gimmick match for DiPaolo. This time a Judo Jacket match. Eh. Right after that was Ed "Strangler" Lewis vs. Dick Shikat from 1932. Shikat looks very much like a German wrestler and works like one too. You can see a lot of Horst Hoffman in him, or a lot of Shikat in Hoffman. This was the first time for me to see Lewis wrestle, so I don't have much to go on, but aside from a powerful looking headlock and a sharp side headlock takedown he didn't really show me much. Admittedly, it was only the highlights of an hour plus match (the commentator actually referred to "high spots" at one point), but Shikat appeared the more talented of the two. Good match but not as good as the Londos/Nagurski fight. The clips of Ramona Isabella & Ethel Johnson vs Babs Wingo & Marva Scott were interesting as they were a troupe of Black female wrestlers who toured around the country wrestling each other. I also saw a clip of an old women's match between Olga Baranoff and Hanka Kavetzka but that was very much your cliched slapping and hair pulling. Clips of Abe Coleman vs. Lou Plummer, Jim Londos vs. Ray Steele and Man Mountain Dean vs. Howard Cantonwine all look good, especially the first two match-ups. Man Mountain Dean is the undiscovered fatboy worker of the 30s. Next, I watched some old damaged film of the 1920 Earl Caddock vs. Joe Stecher fight. I believe this match marks the end of the catch-as-catch-can era of professional wrestling and that there has been much debate over the years as to whether it was a work or shoot. I'm not smart enough or well-read enough to enter that debate, but work or shoot it reminded me of shoot style, which should come as no surprise given that catch was one of the foundations of the UWF style. Much of the fight (at least what is shown in the film) is Stecher going for his body scissors hold and Caddock fighting his way out of it and Caddock trying to pin Stecher's shoulders to the mat. In newsreel form it's intriguing but I can't imagine what two hours of it was like. Finally, we have the complete opposite -- The Beast vs. Argentina Rocca. Well, you might think it's the complete opposite but my God does Johnny Powers go to great lengths on commentary to put this over a legitimate sporting contest even when the Beast is doing comedy spots. The Beast has to be on the short list for hairiest men in (wrestling) history. I'm not a fan of Rocca but the Beast has a knack of making mediocre stars tolerable and there's a novelty to his bouts that hasn't worn off yet. Go the Beast.
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Made it through the second 50. A lot of handheld matches this time round. Here are the matches I enjoyed most: 450. Genichiro Tenryu vs Great Muta (WAR 10/11/96) 447. Ric Flair, Arn Anderson & Sting vs Great Muta, Buzz Sawyer & Dragon Master (WCW Power Hour 01/26/90) 446. Randy Savage vs Genichiro Tenryu (WWF/AJPW Summit 04/13/90) 430. Manami Toyota vs Toshiyo Yamada (AJW Grand Prix 06/21/92) 426. Volk Han vs Dick Vrij (RINGS 08/21/92) 413. The Rockers vs Powers of Pain (WWF MSG Network 01/15/90)
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#413 Miracle match that's still fresh a second or third time round. Jannetty is phenomenal in this. Not only because of those high elevation bumps but for his selling throughout. He was just brilliant. Both teams looked good here. The Powers of Pain for their power wrestling and the Rockers for their teamwork. The match didn't overstay it's welcome but at the same time left you wanting more. Too bad there wasn't a rematch.
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#404 If nothing else, this is a match which holds your attention. Scotty Steiner was pumped up to begin with. If there's one thing I like about pre-Big Poppa Pump Scott Steiner it's his matwork. He just cannibalises guys on the mat. In fact, he may be one of my favourite mat guys of all time simply from an aesthetic point of view. He wouldn't budge an inch when it came to giving up position, but man did he look good. He was so fired up that it wouldn't surprise me if his brain thought he was in some legit competition. All of the Steiners' shit looked good in this match. Yeah, structure, and selling, and pacing are important, but I've got nothing against a spotfest when an amateur wrestling spotfest. I guess Kurt Angle really was the third Steiner brother after all. Iizuka took a licking, that's for sure. He would have been pretty sore in the morning. I thought they let up on him a bit after his injury and started pounding on him again when they wanted their shit to look good. Fujinami vs. each brother was the most fascinating wrinkle for me. I thought Fujinami looked pretty good in this. As good as you can look in a match where your opponents aren't being entirely cooperative. The Steiners did sell a bit for the Japanese and there was a brief Scotty in Peril segment, so it wasn't entirely uncooperative. Throughout the course of the bout I kept thinking would the stiffness have been so much of a factor in Japan or did it just stand out because it was so stiff for a WCW match (ala Regal vs. Finlay). I'm still not really sure. I'm not even sure if the Steiners would've taken liberties with Iizuka in Japan. Really interesting match.
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#401 Solid match; more notable for being better than their Clash match than anything else. Personally, I prefer Flair as a heel. There were small details to his babyface work that didn't wash with me like his comeback at the end which blew off the figure four headlock segment. Props to Eaton for taking those bumps on the floor, but Flair caught a second wind from nowhere.
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#415 I've never been a fan of any of the Bret/Yokozuna matches and this was no exception. It's not really the workers' fault. This was worked pretty much how you'd expect it to be, but it was still slow, plodding and dull. Bret vs. a big man is a match-up that doesn't really interest me as Bret has neither the offense nor the theatrical selling ability to make it interesting.
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#423 "Underwhelming" is probably the best description for this match, but it's pretty clear from watching it that they didn't set out to reinvent the wheel. It's very much a house show title match, and I'm pretty convinced these days that a lot of the great looking lucha from title records and lucha mags was house show quality.
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#412 Wild Street Fight but as with most Onita fights I'd rather be watching a Hong Kong action flick.
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#414 I liked what I could see of this, which wasn't much. It's a shame that there wasn't anyone filming this at ringside but I guess being three or four rows back made this an authentic handheld .I liked how the pink and red hues gave this a real red light feel. When I first got the internet, and file sharing meant downloading postage stamped files on a modem all night long, this match took on something of a legendary standing thanks to rspw award archives and the like. It's not a bad series of matches, but I'm not sure it deserves its legendary status anymore especially with the crap finish. Still, I finally got to see this and I guess that means I've knocked if off old-school modem list.
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#424 I thought this was a good match. It was a bit slow and methodical at times, and the build didn't quite match the finish despite Misawa continuing to sell the elbow after the bout, but I liked that Kawada had a game plan. He's pretty clearly the best mat worker in All Japan. The work itself is pretty basic but his holds look nasty and he looks nasty doing them. Ultimately, he didn't have enough in his arsenal to best Misawa. Misawa was a bit like Michael Jordan here, or maybe a Pete Sampras or Michael Shumacher, to run with some 90s examples of champions who always had that little bit extra up their sleeve, or in reserve, no matter how hard their opponents tried or how stiff their challenge was. Misawa was probably a bit too dominant given how many times he suplexed Kawada at the end, but this was his absolute physical prime and I guess he deserved to show off his class a bit.
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#425 I liked this just fine. In general, I think the six man tags and tag matches are better than the singles matches from this era, but I tried to take this on its merits instead of expecting it to be the next level up in the Jumbo/Misawa feud. I will say that I think All Japan matches are a lot better when they're striking each other as opposed to working submissions, but if there's one thing that All Japan did better than anyone else it was their finishing stretches. Jumbo was fired up stretch (and afterward in the locker room too) and really drove home his size and strength advantage to brutal effect. I'll leave it to others to worry if Misawa made any inroads toward beating Jumbo again. I liked this as a stand alone bout.
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#430 Another match I hadn't seen in donkey's years. The last match If theirs I watched was their bout from '89 which I really liked, and I thought this was excellent as well. Sure, there were flaws, and they could have sold more, but the action never let up and I loved the contrast in styles and the dynamic it created. This is by far my favorite era of Manami Toyota because it feels like she's working 50/50 with her opponent instead of being the one calling the match and forcing opponents to wrestle her match. I really liked how she needed to pull out submission counters to fend off Yamada's kicks, and for a wrestler not renowned for her selling I thought she did s great job of selling that splash onto Yamada's knees. There was a slight lull in the third quarter of the match, but they picked things up for the stretch run and I thought it was a tremendous run home. I was actually kind of thrilled for Yamada, who've I never fully liked, but who was really likable here, as I think Fumi Saito pointed out, though not for the reason he mentioned which was her outfit. Yamada seemed the stronger of the two down the stretch and felt like the one with more in reserve. Deserved winner of an excellent contest.
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#426. This was blissfully short compared to the Misawa/Kobashi match I watched. Volk is such a beautiful wrestler to watch. Every motion he makes in this match is beautiful whether it's on offense or defense. It doesn't matter how good Vrij is, Volk is mesmerizing. I'm struggling to think of how many wrestlers I thought were on another stratosphere as though they were walking on clouds, but Volk is one of them. There are a lot of comments here suggesting Volk "pulled out the win." To me, he manipulated the situation from the get-go and the result was never in doubt.
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#437. These two had a run of matches from '96 through to '97 that I really liked. This felt like a test drive for those bouts. They were obviously trying hard, but when a match like this doesn't click for you it's like watching two wrestlers go through the motions of an epic match. I liked the final few minutes but I could have done without going through 30 minutes to get to them.
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#441. I enjoyed this quite a bit. It followed a simple tag strategy of separating the partners from one another and working over the injured man, which is classic tag structure and classic All Japan structure. I thought Taue, in particular, did an excellent job of working this narrative and was the driving force behind laying it down. I can see how it must've been seen as a step down from the more grandiose tags of previous years, and to be fair the end result doesn't feel like a particularly big or important moment, but the work felt fresh at least for someone like me who doesn't watch a lot of All Japan.
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Mile Zrno vs. Steve Wright (Berlin 1/31/98) Great match! If there was a better wrestling match in 1998 it only took place in BattlARTS or RINGS. I've often heard that Wright would guzzle an opponent and wouldn't give him anything unless he was able to literally pry it from him. He controlled this bout from start to finish but he let Zrno shine so he must have had a positive opinion of our fearless hero. Zrno, for his part, looked great. If this is tail end Zrno then few wrestlers have had a better finishing run to their career. Great stuff. Great upload.
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I think that's fair. I think people are also working backwards a lot of the time. I mean nobody called the All Japan style "King's Road" or referred to Kawada, Misawa, Kobashi and Taue as the "four pillars" when I first heard of All Japan Pro-Wrestling.