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Showing results for tags 'March 14'.
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Man I love NOAH. Even a minor lead-in tag like this will have a unique, unpredictable structure, everyone playing their role and guys unloading on eachother with stiff shots. Great opening which gets the crowd by the balls immediately. Marufuji putting Hashi in the tree of woe so he and Ogawa can double team Akiyama is something we all did in WWF No Mercy. I like Akiyama a lot but I thought he was outshone by Hashi here, who was just way stiffer, more intense, etc. I thought Akiyama could've done a better job giving Ogawa & Marufuji receipts for their rat boy tactics. Ogawa looked great as usual outsmarting his opponents. Marufuji didn't do anything stupid, even showing some viciousness dropkicking Hashis skull repeatedly. Loved the finish. -
This was flirting with Full Five status for me until that awful finish. It really did feel like the culmination of a rivalry that showed a true sense of progression. Hansen guzzled Colon in the first couple of matches just like he always did everyone. The last two matches showed Colon fighting back and here, it was clear he had Hansen's number. The match never would have worked as well as it did without allowing Hansen to be Hansen early in the feud, because his perilous state as they moved from one match to the next became increasingly surreal. All of the extracurricular brawling around the ring didn't bother me, mainly because of what I'd label an iconic visual in wrestling history when the camera panned back to see the overjoyed reactions of fans in the stands. They were working toward the King of All Blowoff Cage Matches, then when Colon went outside, I was kind of in awe of him as a babyface, because he was taking the fight to the bad guys and looked incredible doing it. Unfortunately, a cage match does imply that a finish like that can't happen, and it did anyway, so the feud lacking any clean finishes does hurt it some in my eyes in terms of all-time rivalry status. But as a series of matches, it's only barely beneath that, and this is a near-miss where I really wish I could go all the way. ****3/4
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Two big guys maul each other for 5 minutes. Primitive match, but I prefer them doing this over some drawn out 10 minute affair. Morishima looked like he could've been great if he had worked more Otto Wanz style matches. He certainly looked up there slugging it out with Vader in the corner.
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If you've seen one McManus match you've pretty much seen them all, but don't let that stop you from watching him. McManus is an expert heel but more importantly an expert on how to build interesting matches around the same formula; that he never lost on TV for 20 years straight while still keeping it fresh speaks volumes about him. His clinical holds and violent jabs in this were pretty great. St. Clair is about as good as any other babyface would be in this situation, playing it pretty basic for the most part, altough he did have this cool flipping arm snap move that should be steal worthy to today's flip-loving indy wrestlers and McManus did this cool noodle arm sell in response. They work some believable near finishes (including a DQ tease that had the crowd by the balls) and a pretty nice eventual conclusion. Bread and butter stuff but it's a threat to watch McManus do his thing as even 45 years later his stuff hasn't aged a bit.
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