ohtani's jacket
DVDVR 80s Project
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Everything posted by ohtani's jacket
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Rick Rude had awful control segments. -
They're not getting a body part worked over; they're just getting stretched. It happens in every Joshi match. The submission sections are as predictable as the outside brawling, the nearfalls, the reversals, the saves or any other component of the matches. It's something they do in the first third of the match. Sometimes it's sold well, but often it's crap. The same is true of every other wrestling formula. I don't know what type of wrestling you like, but I bet we could pick it apart. Working a body part is a storyline in some Joshi matches, but not all Joshi matches. Submissions are a part of practically every Joshi match but not a storyline. Why do it? Because that's the way their working style developed over time? It's not something I really care for, but selling a body part all the time is the opposite extreme. The emphasis in Joshi is that after the matches they're always buggered. Regardless of what was sold during the match, they always put over how fucked they are after a match. That's what you're supposed to take away from it. Jaguar didn't make it faster. She may have made it more athletic, but more so in the context of her moveset. But she actually wasn't alone in doing that.
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The CMLL World Heavyweight Championship isn't the top belt in CMLL.
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So, Kawada winning would have helped business in the long term because New Japan drew well when the belt came off Hashimoto? They both seem like short term business decisions to me. The best solution would have been to change the dates of the 6/3/94 and 6/9/95 matches so that the 6/95 match took place on 6/3/94 and the 6/94 match took place on 6/9/95. I think that would have worked in terms of Kawada going over. If Kawada had won in June '94 and they'd transitioned from Kawada to Williams to Misawa again then I don't see how that would have made much difference even in the short term. And if they'd waited a year to have a singles rematch on 6/9/95 and Misawa went over then that pretty much ends the feud no matter how long they continue to drag it out for. Misawa would have won in most people's eyes. I don't see the evidence of Kawada being anymore than a Tenryu who takes the belt off Jumbo and loses it back to him. It's a short term booking plan and doesn't solve the problem of Misawa's health being poor or any of the other compounding factors that led to the company's decline. They needed a new Misawa, but they'd cut that avenue off.
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Not really. Tenryu won the TC from Jumbo. Jumbo won it back, and was still the Ace. As far as Daniel's comment about the long term, there was a point at which Baba needed someone else to run on top while Misawa was out for quite some time recovering from years of working injured. Kawada had been burned to the point that the fans didn't buy it, and Kobashi wasn't at the point where he could carry it. The promotion was Misawa-centric, business tanked, they went from one panic move (getting the belt off Kawada to Kobashi), to another (rushing Misawa back way too fast), to another than Misawa didn't at all want that quickly (having the belt go back from Kobashi to Misawa). The handling was dogshit. I know Daniel wants to cling to his notion that the booking when to shit when Baba got the cancer. We've been down his road before and the reality is that the big picture long term booking went to shit when Baba was healthy, much earlier. Daniel likes to ignore it when it's pointed out, then pop his head up a while later like here to go back down that road. John I didn't mention anything about Baba. What evidence is there to suggest that Kawada winning here would have helped business in the long run? How would Kawada have drawn in such a way that the belts wouldn't have ended up back on Misawa by May '95? And what then? You can throw it out there as an alternative, but I don't see how it changes anything... Baba still dies, the promotion still splits, wrestling in Japan still nosedives. The money, or what was left of it, was in interpromotional matches.
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What a great thread. Perhaps the barometer is his "here he comes" call.
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The podcast was cool. On the subject of El Dandy, his WCW stint seemed to kill his career in Mexico. Not sure if it's a coincidence or if Paco hates him or what, but that three way hair match is pretty much the end of Dandy's run in Mexico.
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Chigusa/Ozaki was the best match on this show.
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McManus and Pallo should be in, and since the threshold has been lowered so far for other countries most of the luchadores should be in as well.
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I only watched the final match. It was short but a decent enough sprint. It wasn't the sort of all-out match you'd expect from a tag league final, however, and I think the slackness with which AJW booked both the Grand Prix and TLTB in '94 was pretty telling in terms of them losing their edge. They really got lazy cashing in on the interpromotional stuff. Big Egg Universe was poorly run, and if that alienated fans then the booking sure wasn't about to hook them back in.
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Yeah, but Hogan fans will say things like, "look at how he timed that atomic drop on Bobby Heenan to get the maximum reaction from the crowd, that was so good" when all it was was an atomic drop and not timed particularly well. Personally, I think he was too tall with too much muscle mass to be a good worker. Others might argue that he moved well in the ring, but I've never seen it.
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An interesting match to compare this with is the Toyota/Yamada match from a few days later. That match has a better beginning as they have some cool strike exchanges (Toyota may come across as shy and awkward in promos but man is she foul mouthed in the ring.) The stretch run isn't quite as exciting as Toyota/Kyoko, but in a way it's more focused. There are a few too many reversal attempts, and Toyota has the upperhand to a greater extent (making the finish rather obvious), but it all makes sense. (Or maybe I'm just getting my Joshi mojo back.) I never really liked Yamada in the past, but there seems to be a new appreciation for her these days because of her stand up game and Chigusa-like moveset. She was good in this match, though her star had clearly waned.
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This was a good match. People who like Joshi will enjoy it and people who don't won't, but I thought after a perfunctory beginning it developed into a long and exciting stretch run. The finish isn't quite as epic as they might have liked, and Toyota's botches hurt the rhythm a bit even if they're mostly covered well, but it was one Joshi match from 1994 where I wasn't begging for it to end. The thing I always liked about Kyoko is how she was able to convey the joy of performing. She doesn't get to really shine here but I was reminded of how likeable she is. People are probably aware of this from watching her promos but after six years of living in Japan I can tell you she's the type of person you'd love to hang out with. She has the same charisma as a TV comedian and seems like an awesome person. You can tell she's not from Tokyo, that's for sure.
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One has half an hour of defensive matwork and the other has pro-wrestling spots, I guess. I noticed Fujiwara/Fuke was in your top 50 for 1992. 1990 has matches more along those lines rather than something like Fujiwara/Malenko.
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Weren't those closer to pro-style matches?
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Can't really see the Dory Funk comparison as Fujiwara has Terry Funk charisma in my eyes, but perhaps 1990 will be the make or break set.
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I don't think it's going to happen. The closest Fujiwara got to the type of wrestling you seem to like was his 80s New Japan run. Have you seen the match he had with Choshu in '87? I didn't like it because I have funny ideas about Japanese pro-wrestling but everybody else did.
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How do you figure? What did Hogan do that was anything you wouldn't expect from a professional wrestling match? Hogan personifies doing the basics. You can't honestly say that his schtick was extraordinarily better than any other babyface. Hogan was over regardless of his matches. They were a formality, some of which were more entertaining than others. Do you really think that the way Hogan sells and all his mannerisms are better than anybody else? Or the reason he got heat for that matter? He was effective if effective means carrying out a match, but why praise him for doing simple stuff well? All you're doing is setting the bar ridiculously low for Hogan. The first time I ever saw Hogan was in 1988 when he returned after some kind of absence post Wrestlemania IV. Prior to that, Dibiase, Andre, Bobby and Savage had been cutting promos in the early stage of the build-up to the SummerSlam main event. So, the first time I saw him the music hit, he came out from behind the curtain, the crowd went nuts, etc. Hogan was a sensation and for much of the 80s it was like a locomotive. There was nothing innately special about Hogan making an entrance other than he was extremely over and that was contagious. Hogan obviously had qualities that made him popular, but did he really do anything that set him apart? I can't think of anything. Well, there was the entrance and the pose down afterwards, but there needed to be something in the middle and sure as hell wasn't going to be reliant on Hogan as a worker. I can understand people liking Hogan for whatever reason, but do you really get excited when Hogan executes an atomic drop or something like that? It's just basic pantomime.