ohtani's jacket
DVDVR 80s Project
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Everything posted by ohtani's jacket
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Can't say I'm surprised. -
I am a huge fan of Mike Bennett, but that Collins stuff was from the end of '84 to early '85. Blitzer vs. Jones is one of my all-time favorite WoS bouts, but the rest I can live without. There was a serious drop off after '84. It really began earlier than that when people started jumping to All-Star, which diluted Joint's talent pool. There is some good stuff post-84, but not very much of it. I doubt Germany/Austria was much better, to be honest. The early 80s in Europe wasn't as good as the 70s, which wasn't as good as the 60s, which wasn't as good as the 50s.
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My lucha watching fell off sometime in late 2005, but this feels like as good a time as any to pick things up again. This trios was part of the buildup to the Mistico vs. Black Warrior match at the Anniversary Show. CMLL was hot during this period. There was constant heat throughout the bout and they weren't afraid to cut to a wide shot of Arena Mexico, which was literally packed to the rafters. This was well done. There was a tremendous amount of variety in the bout. I always enjoy it when trios matches throw you little nuggets to enjoy. I particularly enjoyed the individual confrontations that Ultimo Guerrero had with all three tecnicos (one in each fall.) Those are the types of moments that add spice to a trios match. There was a lot of great offense from the tecnicos, and Santo and Casas were complete pros. They had were so seasoned that they knew exactly how to contribute without taking a backseat or overshadowing Mistico. The finish to the segunda caida was so good it felt like the match was over. I was a little confused when the ring girl came strutted down the ramp carrying the tercera card. A nice reintroduction to lucha.
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This was pretty good, but it was very measured and slow paced because they were going long. It reminded me of when the All Japan guys would go long and stretch things out a bit, and you'd kind of wish they'd have a shorter, more concise bout. The finishing stretch had its moments, but ultimately that was what we wanted 55 minutes for? The other strange thing about this bout is that because it was a world title match, it didn't pay off the angle from cage match. Perhaps that was done in an earlier bout, but I would have expected more venom from Joe. It'd slot this in the three star range.
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It's been an age since I've watched an Aja/Satomura match. I was wondering if it would be a case of diminishing returns, but not having watched a match of theirs in such a long time meant that it felt fresh. I'll leave it to others to point out the callbacks and psychology behind the match. I'm not sure whether it was Aja shedding weight, Satomura gaining a few pounds, or a combination of both, but there was no longer a sense that Satomura was outmatched and overwhelmed by Aja, which was fitting given it was the debut show for Satomura's promotion. I don't think it was as epic as the GAEA matches, but it was fitting that Satomura went over.
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Time to start reviewing these clips @Matt D I know you love clips.
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1946.11.15 Henri Cogan vs. Charlie Fisher We already had some Charlie Fisher in the archive footage, but he's fun to watch. I suspect if we had more Fisher, he'd be a favorite of many since he's a lively and energetic worker. 1946.12.18 Louis Loew vs. Butcher Johnson 1946.4.27 Butcher Johnson vs. Martin Butch Butcher Johnson is another of those great black workers lost to history. A big star in Britain in the 30s and a stalwart of the business right up until Paul Lincoln broke off from Joint Promotions in the early 60s yet, i suspect, an unknown name to most folks. He worked barefoot and was extremely athletic. There was an exoticism associated with him, particularly in the 30s, because of his ethnicity and skin color, but fortunately that didn't prevent him from demonstrating his wrestling prowess in the ring. I suspect he would have been one to watch in the 1930s.
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This held up well. Yoshida was a special talented lady. It's a shame she doesn't have a deeper pool of matches as she deserves to be recognized as one of the best wrestlers of the 2000s. As far as I remember, this was style of match wasn't Kimura's forte, but it goes to show that if you execute the fundamentals, sell your ass off, and hit some of your own stuff, then you can have a great match regardless of the matchup. It subtly moved away from a Yoshida style match towards more of a hard fought pro-style match, but even that part of the bout was good. This might be Yoshida's best post-ARSION bout.
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As I imagined, most US wrestlers would bill themselves as junior heavyweights. I kind of love how those sites exist when it's a work, though.
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This match doesn't getting going until Todd Sinclair orders the restart. After that, it's a fairly intense fight. There are a few miscues, but it's a compelling bout. Danielson's heel performance is overstated. He had one good moment where they had to force a rope break instead of letting him get DQ'ed, but mostly his heel performance was made up of him giving people the finger and hollering that he was the best in the world. The story here was Homicide, win or go home. I have a soft spot for Homicide so I was glad that he won. TBH, the work in the post-match celebration probably tops the work in the match, but I'm sure there were a lot of real emotions mixed in there. I was in two minds about the finish. The nearfall off the Cop Killa was good, but I kind of wish he'd won with the Cop Kila rather than that lariat. The shoulder stuff was pro-wrestling fluff. Danielson did a good job of selling his arm, but you're not gonna win points with me for that. Overall, I thought it was one of the more memorable matches from 2006, but I'm not sure if it was one of the best.
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Hulk Hogan & Ricky Steamboat vs Randy Savage & Honky Tonk Man (WWF, 1/5/87) Another fun match from the peak Hulkamania years. I would have eaten this shit up as a kid. There's a lot going on in this match without a hell of a lot happening in the ring. They give you a taste of Savage/Steamboat without spoiling your appetite for the big bout. There's a reminder of the bad blood between Savage and Hogan, and Honky looms on the horizon of both Steamboat and Savage. It's another bout where you don't get the full Hogan experience, and where everyone else in the bout is doing the work, but it's fun watching Hogan in the Andre role from a few years prior.
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1946.11.5 Charles Rigoulot vs. Bill Garnon Garnon was another important figure in pre-war British wrestling. In fact, it was Garmon, along with Atholl Oakeley who introduced Britain to All-in wrestling in 1930. There is a short clip on that match available on YouTube. Garnon was closer to retirement here, and didn't have the strapping physique that he possessed in 1930, but he still cut an imposing figure and was a strong looking man. This may only be a snippet of footage, but it's nice to see these famous names from the 30s in action.
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I don't think you're going to find too many examples of US wrestlers between 63 kg (139 lb) and 70 kg (150 lb), certainly not billed at that weight. Almost every wrestler would bill themselves as being over 200lb. I don't think direct comparisons help. I forgot about Rocca. He was certainly spectacular for his time even if he would have been a heavy middleweight in Britain.
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1946.1.9 Harry Brooks vs. Mano Melas Harry Brooks was a British star whose career spanned both the pre-war and post-war eras. The lads over at Wrestling Heritage say he was more of a ruffian than a stylist, but I thought he looked fundamentally sound in these clips and had a great physique. He leaned into the foreign heel trope that was so popular in 50s Catch, but it's a good trope and always leads to wild matches and wild crowds. Though from what I can gather, Melas was actually an American wrestler playing off his Greek heritage. Brooks would go on to appear in one of the first televised matches on the BBC in 1947.
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McManus and Pallo's popularity had little to do with their weight, or even their wrestling skill. It was about their gift of the gab, which ironically is very American. Their FA Cup bout is decent, but not a technical masterpiece. As many people have echoed in the past, the Jacky Corn vs. Billy Howes bout from the same tape is a vastly superior bout technique-wise.
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I'm not sure what you mean by this. It's schematics The Cruiserweight division from the 90s onwards was synonymous with light weight wrestlers. Unless you're trying to argue that the great European lightweights were lighter than an American cruiserweight, but even that seems irrelevant.
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The WWE acquired the WCW Cruiserweight title when they bought WCW and used it to replace the WWF Light Heavyweight title. The Cruiserweight belt was Smackdown exclusive and lasted from 2001-2007. During the early part of Rey's run in the WWE, he competed in the Cruiserweight division while sometimes having matches against bigger opponents. After Eddie Guerrero died, they gave Rey a push where he won the Rumble and became a world champion at WrestleMania. He was never positioned as a heavyweight. He was treated as an underdog with a huge heart. He definitely added muscle, though. After they retired the Cruiserweight belt, and Rey had already been a world champ, they basically had him work against whomever.
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2006 was indeed a strange year for the WWE, and not a particularly good one, but I thought this was pretty good by ladder match standards. I had forgotten that Dave Taylor had a run in the WWE. Regal and Taylor had no place in a ladder match, despite some of the great pirate fights Taylor worked in Germany. I thought it was amusing that they spent most of their time on the outside giving people European uppercuts. They also worked a bit of comedy into the bout by doing that shtick about being afraid of heights. That said, Regal was involved in a couple of brutal sequences, including that incredible spot where Spanky caught him with a neckbreaker off the top of the ladder. I like JBL's enthusiasm, but man was he laying it on thick. Did Joey Mercury mess up his nose for real? That was nasty looking. There were a lot of bodies involved in this, and it had the potential to be a train wreck, but I was entertained.
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This was a decent match as far as clean, technical Cena matches go. He had better matches than this when he first broke through, but he was in a vastly different role here to his early breakout period. As far as I recall, 2007 was Cena's best year. I didn't see too much foreshadowing of that here, and overall I thought 2006 was a weak year for Cena compared to his 2005, and even that year dovetailed towards the end. It will be interesting to see what sparks his 2007. Whatever merits this bout had were ruined by the run-ins at the end. I have zero interest in the DX reunion and Edge hamming it up at the end like a Saturday morning cartoon villain was ridiculous.
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Hulk Hogan & Roddy Piper vs King Harley Race & Paul Orndorff (WWF, 11/24/86) With all the crazy rhetoric flying around about Hogan at the moment, I thought it would be better to just watch a match, and who better to go to for WWF recommendations than elliott. This is a fun match from Hogan's peak years that seems him form a reluctant partnership with Piper, who winds up bailing on the match, leaving Hogan to face Race, Orndorff and Heenan on his own. Even though Hogan never gets to fully unleash, he's over like a mofo and the crowd are happy just to see him pose.
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I don't know the exact reasons, but there was clearly an emphasis on size in America and a larger focus on heavyweight titles. Where that emphasis originated from, I don't know. Lightweight wrestling wasn't the only form of wrestling that fell by the wayside. Women's wrestling and minis wrestling was also marginalized after being fixtures of the Golden Age of professional wrestling. I don't think lightweights ever completely disappeared from the sport, but certainly by the time the 80s rolled around there was a lot of pressure on lighter weight wrestlers to bulk up. I don't think that pressure ever completely disappeared. If you look at the Mysterio that broke through in the WWE, he is far more jacked than he was in ECW or WCW. Japanese and Mexican wrestlers are generally of smaller stature than their American counterparts, so that likely played a role in the development of their wrestlers. However, in both countries, the lightweight wrestlers tried to climb the weight divisions. Fujinami, for example, was one of wrestling's great lightweights, but harbored a desire to wrestle in the heavyweight class. In the US, where weight classes mattered less, small wrestlers also aimed for the world title. I suppose the true answer is that until Mysterio arrived on the scene, there wasn't a Petit Prince level talent working in the States. Some very good workers, but no-one spectacular.
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1948.10.8 Louis Loew vs. Rex Gable 1949.2.4 Al Cabrol vs. Rex Gable 1950.10.13 Georges Freymond vs. Rex Gable Borrowing a name like Gable, I expected someone more dashing, but it turns out that Gable was that most common of grapplers-- the vanilla British heavyweight. Boring as these workers may be, they're still skilled wrestlers, and in actual fact, the third bout is one of the longest clips in the collection (running around 7 minutes) and is a highly competitive and skilled bout. So, I imagine against the right opponent, Gable probably delivered good bouts.
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This was closer to the Joe vs. Angle match that I want to see. it wasn't perfect, but given the circumstances it was as good as you could expect. I was so frustrated with Benoit and Angle's matches in 2001 that I gave up watching the WWE for a good five years, and I felt a similar weight of expectation on these bouts. but I guess I've mellowed a bit over the years. Even the ref bump didn't bother me that much because Joe still won the bout. Of course, it would have had far more impact if Joe had won cleanly, but it's not as though he used the chair himself. He still won using the same hold. It was like winning in overtime vs. clinching it with a buzzer beater.