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Tim Cooke

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Watched Alundra Blaze vs Bull Nakano from 4/3/95 RAW. Weird match, I can easily see why it was highly thought of at the time and is fondly remembered (unheard of to see women or even most men do some of the stuff they were busting out in a US ring) but damn does it not hold up well at all. It's like they had a really great 15 min match planed and then got their time cut down to 6 mins so they decided to keep all the big moves and dump ALL the selling.

 

Rebel has worked with more competent talent thus far than Johnny Hotbody has. Hotbody seems decent but he's feuding with Tommy Cairo. I'd say he's top 5 for who they have. I still have a long way to go so that idea might change with time.

That right thear is enough to convince me I never ever ever want to watch 93 ECW. Any promotion whear Rockin Rebel is in consideration for top 5 guy on the roster is a promotion i'll stay far away from thank you very much.

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Watched Alundra Blaze vs Bull Nakano from 4/3/95 RAW. Weird match, I can easily see why it was highly thought of at the time and is fondly remembered (unheard of to see women or even most men do some of the stuff they were busting out in a US ring) but damn does it not hold up well at all. It's like they had a really great 15 min match planed and then got their time cut down to 6 mins so they decided to keep all the big moves and dump ALL the selling.

I may sound like a dick, but I always thought those Bull vs Blayze match only really appealed to people who never watched any joshi at all, and just don't cut the mustard compared to any kind of short undercard match from any joshi promotion at the same time. Same match happening in Japan, and it wouldn't even be noticed.

 

That right thear is enough to convince me I never ever ever want to watch 93 ECW. Any promotion whear Rockin Rebel is in consideration for top 5 guy on the roster is a promotion i'll stay far away from thank you very much.

Terry Funk, Chris Candido and Johnny Hotbody are 3 reasons why 1993 ECW wasn't a waste a time.

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Watched Alundra Blaze vs Bull Nakano from 4/3/95 RAW. Weird match, I can easily see why it was highly thought of at the time and is fondly remembered (unheard of to see women or even most men do some of the stuff they were busting out in a US ring) but damn does it not hold up well at all. It's like they had a really great 15 min match planed and then got their time cut down to 6 mins so they decided to keep all the big moves and dump ALL the selling.

I may sound like a dick, but I always thought those Bull vs Blayze match only really appealed to people who never watched any joshi at all, and just don't cut the mustard compared to any kind of short undercard match from any joshi promotion at the same time. Same match happening in Japan, and it wouldn't even be noticed.

 

See Big Egg.

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:)

Although I do think they had a better match at SummerSlam 94 than they had at the Egg. But it's been a long while I've seen either so I could be off on this. Either way, yes, just some nondescript stuff in the middle of greatness that was joshi in the mid 90's (and I love Bull).

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Alright. Moved into the new house and have been able to get on the exercise bike with SOME frequency, so I've made it to JUST before Wrestlemania in 08 ECW on hulu.

 

Dusty has the book and It really is a lot of fun. Thoughts:

 

The Chavo/Punk feud was great. It amazes me how much they put Chavo over. Two or three wins in a row. The matches start to blend together a little, but I think the one where Chavo won the title was best as it had two or three overlapping stories and really good execution. At No Way Out, when Punk hits the three amigos, the fans DESTROY him. The Gulf of Mexico match was fun and the Punk as a Mariachi moment is all but forgotten, but it was a great surprise.

 

Punk in Chicago vs Vis was a cute little match. I imagine for people who had followed him since the start of his career, this stuff was a lot of fun to watch at the time.

 

Kofi gets his start in here. Fans LOVE interaction. They love it. They want to be part of the show. Kofi was built in with the claps and the Boom Drop, and they got over REALLY quickly.

 

The Colin Delaney thing is funny, if only because the highlight reel for him after facing Vis, Henry, Kane and Khali was pretty awesome, as was the tape being added to his body after each match. The moment where he swings the chair for the first time to save Dreamer worked pretty well. And he even got some chants vs Chavo.

 

The Flair show was well done, down to the WWE Mobile exclusive at the end with Flair thanking Punk for the moment. Used well, a little Flair adds a ton to the proceedings. Punk was like a kid in a candy store during the tag, and the flip flop with Flair doing the babyface role as the heels were playing Flair was great.

 

It's amazing how far Miz has come from here. I'm not saying he's even a top WWE guy but he's definitely come a long way in the last four years, just in presence and smoothness. I've been mostly tuning out when Miz and Morrison do things, I'll admit. I've also been fast forwarding through the diva stuff for the most part.

 

I think my favorite match so far has been Jesse/Festus/Punk vs Miz/Morrison/Shelton. Some clever bits of layout where they play with perceptions, a good heat segment on Punk with a few false comebacks, a good hot tag and a nice finishing sequence. It's worth tracking down.

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Bob Backlund vs Ken Patera

Pat Patterson vs Sgt. Slaughter

Tiger Mask vs Dynamite Kid

 

Figured that watching the Observer Matches of the Year would make a fun "rainy day" activity. Backlund/Patera I would much agree with the consensus. Patterson/Slaughter I like more than most. The lack of clear ending doesn't hurt the crowd heat. They're roaring at the conclusion of the match. I think it's a fun brawl, a change of pace from the standard style and it holds up well.

 

Tiger/Dynamite left me underwhelmed. A few nice spots at times, but the mat wrestling was dull and there was little selling or apparent story, especially from Sayama. I think the duo is remembered because for many, it was the first exposure to this high paced style. Especially in the United States. But there just isn't substance behind it to sustain it for a long period of time. In retrospect, Sayama was smart to get out before he grew stale.

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Pro Wrestling NOAH

7/24/10-Kensuke Sasaki vs. Go Shiozaki

 

This was in the top tier of highest rated matches of 2010 in the DVDVR match rating thread. If this is what constitutes greatness nowadays, then puro has completely passed me by. I've never seen so many meaningless chops and lariats in my life. I don't feel like going back and checking exactly how many chop exchanges there were, but I'm pretty sure there were at least five.

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Ric Flair vs Harley Race

 

Gene Kiniski's incompetence doesn't bother me as it's a central point of the match. Kiniski basically cost Race the World Championship. The onus is on Solie and Caudil for no-selling the angle there. Though the ending was certainly botched. The strength of this match is Crockett's promotion. It made the title change look like an even bigger deal than usual.

 

The Von Erichs vs The Freebirds

 

This one from 7/4/84. Fun brawl. Doesn't seem like there's really anything that elevates it to classic status though.

 

Tiger Mask (Misawa) vs Kobayashi

 

Was this the first loss for the Tiger Mask character? Good match but I was hardly overwhelmed. I prefer Magnum vs Blanchard.

 

Ric Flair vs Barry Windham

 

Battle of the Belts II. My first time watching this match, absolutely a classic. Flair vs Windham isn't remembered as a rivalry in the same vein as Flair vs Dusty or Flair vs Sting, but they had quite a few very good to great matches in 1986-87, and their rivalry extended through 1993.

 

One complaint about the booking. No issues with the double countout. But the semi-main had a DCO as well, and the match before that ended in a double countout. You can't end the last THREE matches on a card with the same non-finish!

 

Ricky Steamboat vs Randy Savage

Sting vs Ric Flair

 

Almost certainly not the best matches of the year, but safe picks. Very good matches that were seen live by mass audiences. I think the Sting/Flair finish was as bad as Flair/Luger. Judges whose presence promise a finish, and then give them a draw anyway.

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La Fiera vs. Babe Face (Hair v Hair), 1986

 

Terrific match. I thought Fiera looked great in this, with his sympathetic selling and awesome comebacks. Maybe not quite a Chicana level performance, but pretty damn close. Babe Face brought it as well but I thought Fiera was the star here. The couple of trios that built up this match were really good, too. Generally speaking, it's hard to imagine any mask/hair matches in the 80s not being at least good, with the general presentation, violence, and copious bloodshed making for a great atmosphere.

 

Watching this and the newly discovered Chain match against Estrada, Fiera is a guy who is super underrated. I would think this match is a pretty strong Top 10 contender for an 80s Lucha set.

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Re-watched Dreamslam 1 for the first time in I don't know how many years. Show's been talked to death so i'll only post quick thoughts

 

Plum Mariko & Hikori Fukuoka vs Sakie Hasegawa & Kaoru Ito - Perfect opener, came away really wishing we'd have gotten a Sakie vs Plum singles match at some point as they were great together.

 

Shark Tsuchiya & Crusher Maedomari vs Terri Power & Saemi Numata - Somehow even more awful then i'd remembered

 

Kaoru & Ultima Tigrita vs Tomoko Watanabe & Mima Shimoda - Not really a good match but better then I recalled. My memory was that this was really awkward and sloppy but wasn't that bad and for the most part decent.

 

Rumi Kazama & Miki Hanada vs Suzuka Minami & Etsuko Mita - A lot better then I recalled. Maybe went 5 mins too long but otherwise damn good. Love how the AJW vs LLPW feud had more hatred to it then any of the other interpromotional pairings.

 

(3WA Martial Arts Title) Bat Yoshinaga © vs Susan Howard - I've got a lot more tolerance for these sorts of matches now and this had a few enjoyable moments but for the most part was boring, draged and is still not my cup of tea.

 

Devil Masami vs Chigusa Nagayo - Match I was most worried about not holding up but I still found this to be really amazing. I'm sure this exceded whatever exspectations ppl had at the time going in with Chigusa coming out of retirement at the ripe old age of 28 and proving she hadn't lost a step at all. Just two masters going at it in a classic old school style battle. I've seen about 6 or 7 singles matches between these 2 and this is prob my second fave. Best match on the show after Hokuto vs Kandori

 

Kyoko Inoue & Takako Inoue vs Cutie Suzuki & Mayumi Ozaki - Great match, first 1/2 is really good though not as much as I remembered, 2nd half puts this over the top.

 

Bull Nakano & Aja Kong vs Harley Saito & Eagle Sawai - Not quite as good as I remembered but still a really solid affair. LLPW team actually seemed game to do more but the Mega Monsters didn't seem up for it.

 

Dynamite Kansai vs Yumiko Hotta - Remembered this as being a real good match but nothing super special in the grand scheme of things. The only thing that stayed with me was how stiff the match was. Watching it now I have a lot more apreciation for the entirety of it and not just the "oh wow what a kick" moments. The action was just as hard hitting as ever but in between all that I noticed for the first time that there was some really great selling and they built the match in a way to really milk the drama out of everything. Hotta especially steped up and had a good performance in this. Match is pretty much everything you could want out of battle between these two. Great stuff

 

Akira Hokuto vs Shinobu Kandori - Contender for greatest match ever, nuff said.

 

Manami Toyoda & Toshiyo Yamada vs Megumi Kudo & Combat Toyota - Fuckin hell this did not age well. Memory of this was being slightly disapointing but decent enough overall. Nope, much much worse then that. First 2/3 of this are abysmall. Ugly, awkward, no chemistry, no heat & doesn't play to anyones strengths. Just 4 great wrestlers having a horribly off night. The last 1/3 is actually pretty good once they get to the give sequence and start busting out the bigger moves and they manage to actually get the crowd back into things but yeah, so not fun up until then. Makes me apreciate their aweoms 5/5 rematch even more.

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La Fiera vs. Babe Face (Hair v Hair), 1986

 

Terrific match. I thought Fiera looked great in this, with his sympathetic selling and awesome comebacks. Maybe not quite a Chicana level performance, but pretty damn close. Babe Face brought it as well but I thought Fiera was the star here. The couple of trios that built up this match were really good, too. Generally speaking, it's hard to imagine any mask/hair matches in the 80s not being at least good, with the general presentation, violence, and copious bloodshed making for a great atmosphere.

 

Watching this and the newly discovered Chain match against Estrada, Fiera is a guy who is super underrated. I would think this match is a pretty strong Top 10 contender for an 80s Lucha set.

La Fiera and Tommy Rich are probably my two all time "I wish there were more footage from these two" guys. I'm guessing both are top thirty all time contenders but I doubt we have enough meat to justify it

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Akira Maeda vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara 2/5/86

 

Didn't do much for me. Only thing I liked about the first half before the double countout was Fujiwara's headbutts, the rest felt like they were having a low level sparring match at the local gym. Start of the 2nd half when they re-started the match was pretty fun when it was all about them punching, kicking and pulling hair but that only lasted a few mins. Except for Maeda getting in a few more nice kicks I wasn't into the rest until they got to the finish. Last couple mins with Fujiwara working the arm bar was great stuff but it was also 100% all thanks to Fujiwara doing a great job bringing the desperation. Maeda for his part did jack squat to really put it over and his lack of selling ruined the ending as it totally looked more like Fujiwara got choked out then it did Maeda quit from the pain of the leg lock.

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(...) Tommy Rich are probably my two all time "I wish there were more footage from these two" guys. I'm guessing both are top thirty all time contenders but I doubt we have enough meat to justify it

I don't get the appeal of Tommy Rich at all. I've seen some of him in Memphis, and he wasn't particulary good. I'm currently watching lots of him in WCW in the early 90's, and he's not good there. Thus far the only time I enjoyed Tommy Rich was as a manager for the FBI in ECW.

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Ricky Steamboat vs Ric Flair

 

This is the kind of match that kayfabe wrestling needs. A match to point to and say, "if wrestling didn't have the gimmicks, the outside interference, the brawlers, this is what a great match would look like." Then when the heels come in and take the purity away, they generate heat. It's a standard bearer as a match, kind of incomparable to anything else presented in American wrestling. You like it or you don't, but it's hard to present it against a match like Magnum/Blanchard on its merits. Whether you think its the greatest or not is more a philosophical discussion than anything else.

 

Jushin Liger vs Naoki Sato

 

This is the match Tiger Mask and Dynamite Kid wish they had.

 

The Steiners vs Hiroshi Hase and Kensuke Sasaki

 

Not the greatest match of the year, but it's solid and it presented what it promised. It sold the Steiners and their style quite well and got them over as a major tag team.

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Ricky Steamboat vs Ric Flair

 

This is the kind of match that kayfabe wrestling needs. A match to point to and say, "if wrestling didn't have the gimmicks, the outside interference, the brawlers, this is what a great match would look like." Then when the heels come in and take the purity away, they generate heat. It's a standard bearer as a match, kind of incomparable to anything else presented in American wrestling. You like it or you don't, but it's hard to present it against a match like Magnum/Blanchard on its merits. Whether you think its the greatest or not is more a philosophical discussion than anything else.

Which of their matches did you watch?

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Watching the full run of USA Pro Wrestling out of Knoxville from 1988. They were only around for less than a year. It was headlined by guys like The Bullet, Scott Armstrong, Doug Furnas, Mongolian Stomper, Ron Wright, Moondog Spot, Bill Dundee, Buddy Landell and other guys. Towards the end of the run, they brought in Wendall Cooley, Jerry Lawler, Tommy Rich and The Stormtrooper. Stormtrooper looked like Bill Dundee under a mask doing a nazi gimmick. He had the Swastika on his shirt, Swastika flag and even did the Hitler salute. Kinda shocked me that they did this in 88 even if it was the south. Funny thing is he was managed by Ron Wright and had Mr. Hughes as his bodyguard. I wonder what the last Nazi gimmick was in America? I know it's common in Mexico with Dr. Wagner and La Nazi.

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As well as my ongoing All Japan set watching, I've been watching these videocasts of 80s WWF PPVs by this group of Irish lads called OSW Review: http://blip.tv/oswreview

 

Really good production values, very very well put together and quite a good laugh in places. They absolutely love Ventura and have named him their MVP for first 3 Wrestlemanais and Survivor Series 87, ha ha. However, the really need to smarten up on some things and there is a (ever so slightly irritating) tendency to make comparisons to modern WWE -- for example at one point one of them argues that Savage vs. Steamboat is nowhere near the match that Christian vs. Orton was. I get the impression that the main guy who puts it together -- Jay his name is -- is much more of a smart/ hardcore fan than his mates.

 

However, these are well worth the watch if you're into that period. Doubt there's anything new to learn, but they are entertaining and doing seeing the visuals is a novel way to do it.

 

Obviously the BEST (mainstream) old-school wrestling podcast is the one with Dre and the Blackcat Duke Williams -- Flairchops: http://www.flairchop.com/ -- I don't mind shilling those guys, they've given me over 100 hours of free wrestling-based entertainment. I think Blackcat posts here every once in a while.

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Anyone who wants to see a really good Kane performance, just watch Backlash 2008 vs Chavo. After Mania where he beat him in 9 seconds you wonder how the match could be anything but a joke, but they went out there in had a really strong match based on legwork and so much of that was Kane's selling. What impressed me the most is how well he sold while on offense, making it seem like it took more effort to hit things than usual and making sure to sell getting up and moving around after every move. And it built into the story since it was how Chavo kept getting back on offense, the best bit being Kane being unable to hit his top rope clothesline properly late in the match and Chavo capitalizing by recovering more quickly and snapping his rope off the top. It was a smart, logical, believable ten minute match. Good stuff and Kane more than held his own.

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Watching the full run of USA Pro Wrestling out of Knoxville from 1988. They were only around for less than a year. It was headlined by guys like The Bullet, Scott Armstrong, Doug Furnas, Mongolian Stomper, Ron Wright, Moondog Spot, Bill Dundee, Buddy Landell and other guys. Towards the end of the run, they brought in Wendall Cooley, Jerry Lawler, Tommy Rich and The Stormtrooper. Stormtrooper looked like Bill Dundee under a mask doing a nazi gimmick. He had the Swastika on his shirt, Swastika flag and even did the Hitler salute. Kinda shocked me that they did this in 88 even if it was the south. Funny thing is he was managed by Ron Wright and had Mr. Hughes as his bodyguard. I wonder what the last Nazi gimmick was in America? I know it's common in Mexico with Dr. Wagner and La Nazi.

SMW had a jobber called The Stormtrooper in 1992, wearing a Swastika mask and t-shirt. It's funny because the announcers called absolutely no attention to the fact the promotion had a Nazi sympathizer working for him, he was just Joe Nazi trying to earn a living in the world of professional wrestling. He wrestled Dixie Dynomite in one of his two matches in a battle of racist gimmicks, and after losing, helped Killer Kyle attack Dixie and leave him laying, which seemed to make no sense. Anyway, this guy did not resemble Bill Dundee in stature at all so I doubt it was the same guy, even though it was the same area in the same time.
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  • 2 weeks later...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui2uXcAxwjI

 

I remember loving the Taz/Jerry Lawler/Jim Ross angle from 2000 despite how silly a lot of it was and watching it back now I still really loved it. Shame they didn't get more time, but the pay off match was fun while it last and JR celebrating the shot with the candy jar was tremendous

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