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Stan Hansen


Grimmas

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The brawling all around the arena is a good visual, but Colon winning by just stepping out is not something I'm a fan of. I hate escape the cage rules but this was almost an exception as Hansen tried like hell to get away from Colon. For Colon to win like that? Anti-climactic for all that built up to it, for sure.

 

Out of curiosity, did you watch the cage match after watching the feud in order or did you watch it in isolation?

 

For anyone looking to watch these matches, there's a guide for the feud in the Puerto Rico wrestling thread.

 

In order, twice now, though the first time was back in December or so. It was less bothersome the second time, but I also knew it was coming. I still love the match, the ending just keeps it from being as great as the strap match.

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Count me down in loving the Puerto Rico Colon stuff. When you have "fans" throwing switch blades into the ring you know they're doing something right. I se him as a top 10 guy. My only knock against him is his runs in Memphis and WCW. I thought the matches were good. I just thought the program was identical with Idol , and Luger. We see him beat the local baby face. Then he gives a rematch with the bullrope match. I'd like to see him mix it up a bit more. This won't hurt him, but it won't leapfrog him from 3 to1 either.

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I just finished the 4/14/83 Funk vs Hansen match and was underwhelmed, If I viewed it randomly, I'm sure I would have liked it, maybe loved it. However, after the pimping in this thread I expected a lot more particularly, from Hansen. Funk totally stole the show and was amazing. Hated the ending. What am I missing?

 

Did adore the Andre vs Hansen match - that was amazing. I can't believe Hansen arm dragged Andre. Didn't like that Hansen didn't sell the arm after the punishment Andre put on it. Liked the finish here.

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Yeah, Funk has the standout performance but he couldn't have had that match with anyone else. Funk's selling is made even better because he's getting an all time ass-kicking from Hansen. A the same time, Hansen isn't eating him alive. There's a natural flow and Funk's fantastic, over-the-top selling is matched by Hansen's, but on a much subtler level. Watch it again sometime. I wasn't in love with it the first time I saw it either but now I'm with Steenalized. Favorite match ever.

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El Borica, don't want to make a lot of work for you, but would really appreciate an intro guide in the GWA section along the lines of the Joshi or WoS ones. Personally, I'm massively looking forward to watching the PR stuff.

Seconded.

Sure, I'd be glad to do it. I have to see how I fit this into my free time, but I'll do it. How would you need the info presented and what would you need it to cover?

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I just read this entire thread and i apologize if it has been mentioned but I think people need to focus on his AWA match with Leon White as Hansen's key match being a ring general. It is an awesome performance of showing a younger hoss how you can dominate on the mat, build to big spots and beat the shit out of each other leading to the finish. Wrestling training 101.

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From what I've seen, his AWA run is what I gravitate towards. He had other constraints in Japan. For some people, that's what made him great, how he used those constraints to be a force. For me, without them, he was able to show a different side. I love how chickenshit he is against Bock and the Hennig match is spectacular.

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I just read this entire thread and i apologize if it has been mentioned but I think people need to focus on his AWA match with Leon White as Hansen's key match being a ring general. It is an awesome performance of showing a younger hoss how you can dominate on the mat, build to big spots and beat the shit out of each other leading to the finish. Wrestling training 101.

 

One thing that I've noticed watching 80s sets and just a shit ton of Hansen in general is how awesome he is as an opponent for big/fat guys/monsters/freak shows. He has really good to all time classic level matches with Andre, Baba, Blackwell, Leon White, Vader, and if you want to call Hogan a big guy (I would) you can add him to the list too.

 

Those guys are all monsters or big guys in different ways and Hansen had really great matches with all of them and was taking a different approach to each match.

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I have come to appreciate Stan Hansen's matches in the 90s, many of his performances, the selling which was organic and natural, very logical and the way he corners matches into following along the lines, and frankly how amazing it is that they then come out well, because while natural, they're definitely not a sure thing. His opponent has to do the right thing at almost every point or the entire endeavor falls apart.

 

That said, whenever one of his 80s AJPW matches pops up, I almost always regret having watched it. Case in point: Bockwinkel/Hennig vs Hansen/Dibiase. Hansen gave nothing, and even when Bock or Hennig was taking it to him, he'd take three punches and then rake his opponent's eyes and take over, so it wasn't even any sort of toughness. He just ate them up whenever they were in the ring and dragged things down. At one point, Bock, obviously frustrated, put his legs up to counter an elbow drop. I'd never really seen it done like that and it looked brutal. Hansen completely no sold it and walked over to his corner. I think he dropped three spots on my ballot in a single moment. He wasn't even cooperating with his own partner, going for a back elbow and leaving Dibiase looking like an idiot as he was a second too late to make it a double back elbow.

 

And it happened all the time, in almost every match that pops up. Frankly, the only time he looks good is when he's in there with Brody and Brody's giving even less than he is, artificially pushing him up by default. The only time he ever really seems to give anything (or anyone is able to take anything from him) is when he's up against someone he simply physically can't contain, like Andre, and that can lead to an amazing match, yes. (Or maybe when he's in there against THE BOSS). Otherwise the best you're going to get is stalemate brawling. There's no narrative thrust to it. There's no payoff to it. It's just a dull buzzing in your head. You've seen it once, you've seen it a thousand times, and it can grind an otherwise interesting match to a halt the second he tags in.

 

One thing I do fully appreciate is that all of those great matches from the 90s couldn't exist if it wasn't for it this, because it created the possibility for the cracks that would form that his opponents could captalize upon. It created the aura that made every moment that he sold in the 90s so meaningful. The more I watch him in the 80s, really in what has to be considered his PRIME, the more I think that the only differences between him in the 80s, screwing up tag matches, and in the 90s, having great matches, were 1.) that his opponents figured out how to deal with him better and 2.) that he was physically older and more broken down and simply lacked the ability to stop them from dealing with him (and even then, they had to be clever or lucky or relentless about it).

 

I'm pretty certain that 1982 Hansen wasn't thinking to himself "Man, if I just have another five or six years of non-collaborative performances eating people alive, I'll be able to pay it off in the 90s with some great matches after I've broken down a bit." He was thinking about whatever would make him look best in the moment, that would get him his bookings, and that's fine. It's totally understandable. It's what he should have done for his family, probably, but it sure as hell didn't make for great performances. To me, wrestling is supposed to be collaborative. It's supposed to be about creating the illusion of competition, about two wrestlers working together to create something together. And even then, it's fine, even impressive when matches can still be great without that happening, but when matches are actively made worse beacuse that's not happening, that's something else entirely.

 

Past disagreeing with me completely about his 80s AJPW tag peformances (which is fine; obviously you're allowed to do that), I just don't get how people can just overlook all of these matches.

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You can't not look at Bret's 80s tags. Those are some of the matches that made Bret's reputation. He's not making my top 10, absolutely not. I'm not sure if he's in my top 20 either. Those are a part of why. With Hansen, it's a guy, in his prime, in dozens of matches over a span of years actively making them worse (bad, even) because he's in them. He's doing this through tendencies seen elsewhere in his work. These aren't some obscure matches, either. The Hansen/Brody team was legendary. You could argue that this is the sort of match we have the most from his home promotion in his prime, right? It's got to be close if it's not absolute truth. It's one of the things he's best known for. How do you discount that if he's in your top 5?

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I agree that his early-mid-80s tag work is some of the least compelling stuff from his career, with Stan leaning into his worst tendencies, reinforced by Brody. I'm not sure I buy that he looked bad and actively made those matches worse. But it's been a good five years since I watched the bulk of that stuff, so I don't feel sharp to make specific arguments. There aren't any perfect candidates, and if I'm dinging Stan, that's definitely a period I'd point to. But as you sort of allude to Matt, some of his flawed tag work felt like a byproduct of a character I find tremendously effective overall. Anyway, I'd never argue that we should just discount it. Not sure that re-analyzing it is where I want to spend my energy at the moment.

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Here's the match.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhu0i_hansen-dibiase-vs-bock-hennig-12-7_news

 

I just watched it and I actually really enjoyed Hansen's performance in it. It was about what you would expect. Some important things to consider. This match took place during the 1985 tag league. Hansen and Dibiase would go on to win the tag league while Hennig/Bock finished tied for last.

 

The punches in the corner that Hansen no-sold and then eye raked Bock wasn't part of a "Hennig and Bock taking it too Hansen" sequence. It was literally the first offense Hansen took in the entire match like 30 seconds in. Hansen sold the initial impact of the blows and shrugged them off and eye raked Bock to take over. Don't see the problem at all. Hansen should not have been selling those punches as meaningful at all. It would have been dumb for him to do so.

 

The egregious no selling spot that dropped him 3 spots on Matt's ballot was equally non-offensive to me. Hansen raked the eyes following the punches in the corner, put nick in a pretty rough headlock as they fought for position (I look at this as Hansen saying "do something boy, I'm right here), Hansen then bodyslammed Nick, and went for the elbow drop. Nick put his legs up to block it and it was pretty brutal looking. Hansen kind of rolled off and Bock hesitated so Hansen covered/smothered him and then tagged out to Dibiase because they're right in the corner.

 

Honestly, I'm not seeing the problem. This entire sequence from the no selling the punches in the corner to the legs up on the elbow drop spot that knocked him down your ballot is all literally in the first minute of the match where the only offense Hansen has taken are the punches and the legs up on the elbow drop. Hansen was the #1 Gaijin the company. A monster who was presented as credible enough to beat Giant Baba and Jumbo (the top natives) and only get beaten by those guys. It would be non-sensical for Hansen to be selling big off minimal offense 60 seconds into a match against the part timers who are going to finish last in the tournament Hansen is about to win.

 

You've seen Hansen work with both guys in the AWA in singles matches within 6 months of this match. Does Hansen work with them differently because they are in a different setting? If so shouldn't this be a credit for Hansen understanding how he should work based on where he is? Hansen vs Curt Hennig in All Japan in 12/85 does not equal Hansen vs Hennig in AWA from 5/86 because of what the specific promotions needed from those wrestlers.

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I thought it was clear the whole time that Matt D just doesn't so much dislike Hansen in Japan as much as just not really like style of wrestling in Japan.

 

Maybe I should concede the point and just watch more Puerto Rico or something.

 

It's ok buddy we can be in the bad taste club together. I think Alabama rasslin is right up your alley.

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I thought it was clear the whole time that Matt D just doesn't so much dislike Hansen in Japan as much as just not really like style of wrestling in Japan.

 

Maybe I should concede the point and just watch more Puerto Rico or something.

I don't think your line of argument here is crazy or anything. The dull buzzing you described is about what I felt as I watched the Funks vs. Hansen/Brody from 12/8/84 that Dave gave five stars. That whole promotion had been spinning its wheels for a year or more by then, with a few exceptions like the Jumbo-Kerry match.
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One issue is a lack of context, certainly. Also a lack of progresion. I can get a sense of it with the 90s stuff, but I haven't watched with any sense of chronological order with these tags. They're all in a bubble to me. You see a number of pairings multiple times and presumably one match would inform the next on some level, like in every pairing ever, but I haven't watched that way.

 

But I do get this feeling every time a match (new to me) appears that looks like I'd be interested in it on paper.

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On the early 80s tags, yeah I would agree Hansen was very much working along with Brody to put himself over to the largest degree possible. I will also say that after a while Hansen figured out that he was a household name in Japan and no longer needed to do that. That's when he started to realize the effect he could have on the careers of people like Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi, Taue and Akiyama. I wouldn't say he was planning on that being the case while he was doing it, but his obsessive putting himself over as a badass in Japan set up the 90s run all the same. I would also say that in his U.S. work during the 80's he was far more giving and willing to show ass as a heel. My guess would be that at some point Hansen had a change in the way he thought about wrestling and started to use his (ill-gotten? I'm sure to some) fame to aid the careers of the young workers around him. At the same time, he kept true to his straightforward style. I've read interviews where he said that he would go at his opponents and see how they reacted, then proceed from there. You can certainly see that in his bouts with Kawada and Kobashi. One thing I always appreciated about him in the early 1990's was that he worked every one of the four pillars differently, very often in a way that complimented what they did. The glaring exception there is Misawa, who Hansen never seemed to click well with. It may be due to Misawa trying to adapt to Hansen's style, or his perceptions of it, while Hansen was trying to do the same.

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On the early 80s tags, yeah I would agree Hansen was very much working along with Brody to put himself over to the largest degree possible. I will also say that after a while Hansen figured out that he was a household name in Japan and no longer needed to do that. That's when he started to realize the effect he could have on the careers of people like Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi, Taue and Akiyama. I wouldn't say he was planning on that being the case while he was doing it, but his obsessive putting himself over as a badass in Japan set up the 90s run all the same. I would also say that in his U.S. work during the 80's he was far more giving and willing to show ass as a heel. My guess would be that at some point Hansen had a change in the way he thought about wrestling and started to use his (ill-gotten? I'm sure to some) fame to aid the careers of the young workers around him. At the same time, he kept true to his straightforward style. I've read interviews where he said that he would go at his opponents and see how they reacted, then proceed from there. You can certainly see that in his bouts with Kawada and Kobashi. One thing I always appreciated about him in the early 1990's was that he worked every one of the four pillars differently, very often in a way that complimented what they did. The glaring exception there is Misawa, who Hansen never seemed to click well with. It may be due to Misawa trying to adapt to Hansen's style, or his perceptions of it, while Hansen was trying to do the same.

One of my takeaways from watching the yearbooks was that Hansen's lack of chemistry with Misawa was overstated, perhaps because he fit so absurdly well with Kobashi and Kawada. But he was essential in putting Misawa over as the new ace and did a really professional job of it in their '92 series, even if none of the matches were all-time classics.
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