Posted June 9, 200916 yr comment_5440477 Adrian Adonis & Dick Murdoch vs. Tatsumi Fujinami & Kengo Kimura (12/8/84) - Starts off strong with Murdoch and Adonis using the belts as weapons, nearly knocking over a trophy, slamming the Japanese guys on tables. Murdoch and Adonis are such a great tag team, abusing Kimura, cutting off the ring. Adonis lays in some pretty vicious shots. Kimura makes a great comeback using the Americans against each other. He whips Adonis into the corner, crushing Murdoch and shortly after, he uses Murdoch to ram Adonis out of the ring. It was short lived after a Murdoch elbow but it was a great comeback sequence. Kimura’s selling after each shot is pretty great too and something I never noticed before. Great turnaround later on as Kimura slams the Americans on the table outside and they lay there in a crumpled mess. Hot ending which ends in a North-South Doomsday Device and a clean pin. This was just super freaking great. Murdoch and Adonis ruled, dominating the match with Kimura and Fujinami throwing in enough hope spots and comebacks to keep it moving. Add the clean pin and this is probably in my Top Ten. Strong, strong nomination. Looking to see if this match was nominated, I see you guys aren't amped about North-South kicking ass. I felt the exact opposite. I enjoyed it immensely and it makes me look forward to the rematch on 193 (NJ Classics 180)
June 10, 200916 yr Author comment_5440495 Um, probably. However, I was going the Pakistan route or whatever country NJ toured in that won't have a set and included it here. If Phil wants it in islands, we can throw it there.
June 10, 200916 yr comment_5440496 I'm fine with it being here. It's by nature, more an NJ match than anything else. Here's what I wrote. It's possible that Phil and I are badly underestimatig the appetite for North-South. I just thought their matches kind of ran together. Anyway ... This is from a WWF-promoted show in the Philippines. Solid tag match featuring hard work from all four men. I liked Fujinami firing up and slugging it out with Murdoch. But the crowd didn't know how to react to a lot of what they did, and that hurt it. I can't say it stood out from the pack of Adonis/Murdoch tags enough to merit a nomination.
July 12, 200916 yr comment_5441827 Honestly Will if this is a match you love then it should go on, I thought Murdoch and Adonis totally ate Fujinami and Kimura alive here, this might have well have been them killing 20 minutes against Steve Travis and Tony Garea on a Spectrum undercard. Even the rare moments of Kimura and Fujinami offense were still all about Murdoch and Adonis doing their signature bumps and stooges. Murdoch and Adonis have lots of cool shit, but so do Fujinami and Kimura and there is no reason why they should have been treated as such scrubs.
July 13, 200916 yr Author comment_5441858 If Travis and Garea were as good as Fujinami and Kimura and the match was laid out the same way, it would be the best match of Garea and Travis's lives. It's a bullshit argument. You could have subbed in Morton and Gibson as the names and it would be raved in Crockett. Oh shit, did you see the ass kicking that Morton (Fujinami) took? Yeah, fuck that was wicked. In fact, there are tons of RNR matches where the whole purpose of the match is them getting their asses kicked by the heels (or in this match, the gaijin). Either way, accroding to Loss, this is a pretty famous match and should be included on its notoriety just as the TM-DK matches and some horrible hour long draws.
July 13, 200916 yr comment_5441865 I have no problem with the match making the set. You really love it, and if any of the three of us feel as strongly about a match as you feel about this it should go on. That being said, this wasn't a R+R's match where the R+R's get beat on, those matches are about the Rock and Roll Express, watching them overcome the odds and battle back. I watched two matches from 24/7 tonight after watching this match, R+R's v. Manny/Rude had long sections of heel control with Ricky Morton taking a big beating, and the heels winning, sort of structurally similar match. However that match had a bunch of early Rock and Roll outsmarting the heels, and a bunch of big comebacks, the crowd was totally in to what the Rock and Rolls were doing. Compare that to this match where every moment was focused on Adonis and Murdoch, long beatdowns which were all about all the cool offense Adonis and Murdoch had, shit after the first hot tag, they cut Kimura off without letting him even throw a punch, he comes in fired up and just gets eaten alive. Even when the Japanese guys get comebacks, those comebacks are all about Murdoch and Adonis and their signature bumps and stooges, I don't remember a single defining thing about either Fujinami or Kimura in that match, they were treated like jobbers and were totally bystanders to the Murdoch and Adonis show. You mentioned a hot ending, which I didn't see at all, I saw two guys who have gotten their ass kicked all match being pinned. I also watched Murdoch and Adonis v. Atlas and Rocky Johnson tonight which was a significantly better match, Johnson and Atlas have very little to offer but they were allowed to do all of their signature punches and slams. The crowd was engaged with them and they were allowed to look strong, it looked like Adonis and Murdoch were in a battle, which is never something I got from this match.
July 13, 200916 yr comment_5441893 I'm guilty of forcing Phil to watch this when he was still glowing from his third viewing of Takano-Lane. But seriously, I've now watched this match three times in search of what Will loved about it, and my esteem for it has dropped on each viewing. It's not a bad match, because Adonis and Murdoch were pretty reliably entertaining with their cool offense, bumping and heel schtick. But they really didn't give Kimura and Fujinami shit in this match. I'd say they took 95 percent of the offense. The R' n' R' Express comparison doesn't hold up, because when Morton took a beating for 10 minutes, he and Gibson almost always got their payback after the hot tag. In this match, Kimura took a lot of abuse and got to work a few cool comeback teases. But there was no comeback, so the teases were just that ... teases with no payoff. If you had never seen either team and watched this match, you'd come away thinking Adonis and Murdoch were badass and a lot of fun. But would you have any sense that Kimura and Fujinami were great wrestlers? I mean, Fujinami was probably one of the five best guys in the world at this point. Would you have any sense of that or of what he did well based on this? I don't see how. All of that said, if the match inspires this kind of debate within our little panel, it has to go on the set.
August 10, 200916 yr comment_5442664 I don't know Will, this feels like a definition of a match which the personal picks are made for. If we are doing the 105 solid, 15 picks each plan, a match both Childs and I shat on shouldn't be part of the 105
