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Post by elliott on Dec 21, 2019 6:35:46 GMT -5
Absolutely fantastic match that I would encourage people to watch ASAP. Pretty much everyone has their opinion on Toyota at this point, but her post 2000 work is never discussed and I would guess that most people haven't watched any of it. This made me want to do a deep dive on veteran Toyota because this is an excellent match and she is very un-Toyota like stylistically. I would compare this to the Aja vs Toyota matches from the mid-90s only with Toyota in the Aja role. Toyota is MUCH bigger and more experienced than her opponent (I mean, everyone was bigger than Chikayo Nagashima at this time, but Toyota has filled out) and she used that size to her advantage. This is Manami Toyota attempting to slow the pace down, stretch her opponent and toss her around like a rag doll. Nagashima meanwhile using all of her agility and guile to come up with quick rolling submissions or pin attempts. Of course this is Toyota, one of the most willing bumpers ever, so she bumps her ass off eating plenty of devastating bombs from her smaller opponent (Much like Aja did for her). This isn't flawless. There are some egregious no-selling german suplex spots. You might say "well its Toyota, so of course," but this was the fighting spirit no-selling that permeated the post-AJPW Pillars landscape of Japanese wrestling. Everyone did that shit and it was terrible every single time. So I can't reallllly fault them for it since it wasn' t unique to them or this match by any means. It was also a little too bomb/near fall heavy down the stretch for my personal tastes, but again that's Japan in this era, and what they're doing they're doing well (and anyone who loves mid 90s AJPW and anything from Japan that came after that shouldn't have a problem with the finishing stretch of nearfalls) Nagashima was one of my favorite wrestlers at this time period and this match was a definite reminder of why. She was a really unique wrestler. But this match stands out in the grand scheme of things because it is Toyota so drastically working against type by slowing the match down and providing the storytelling and psychological base. Strongly recommend people check this out. Glad I randomly watched to watch a Nagashima match and went with this one. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot29oAFJpVE |
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Post by jetlag on Dec 22, 2019 9:17:28 GMT -5
A slightly more interesting than usual Toyota match, due to her taking an unexpected bump in the beginning and later throwing punches. There were also a few nifty touches from Nagashima, which shouldn't come as a big surprise. Unfortunately, there were too many meaningless stretches and they also decided to no sell a bunch of things. The finishing stretch was completely ridiculous - they just did the same moves 3 times for 2,9s. By the end I was desensitized to suplexes, double stomps and northern lights bombs. Also, half of Nagashimas offense near the end looked bown. I have no idea why this is brought up, if you want to dig up 2002 GAEA bombfests, Satomura/Nagashima is by far the superior choice.
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Post by elliott on Dec 22, 2019 15:06:53 GMT -5
A slightly more interesting than usual Toyota match, due to her taking an unexpected bump in the beginning and later throwing punches. There were also a few nifty touches from Nagashima, which shouldn't come as a big surprise. Unfortunately, there were too many meaningless stretches and they also decided to no sell a bunch of things. The finishing stretch was completely ridiculous - they just did the same moves 3 times for 2,9s. By the end I was desensitized to suplexes, double stomps and northern lights bombs. Also, half of Nagashimas offense near the end looked bown. I have no idea why this is brought up, if you want to dig up 2002 GAEA bombfests, Satomura/Nagashima is by far the superior choice.I specifically remember being so excited in 2002 to get my copy of Satomura vs Nagashima, as they were probably my 2 favorite wrestlers in Japan at that time and they hadn't had any great big singles matches. I found the match so disappointing I literally did not watch wrestling again for almost a decade so I definitely won't be digging up that piece of shit match. |
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Post by jetlag on Dec 23, 2019 5:02:14 GMT -5
Well, that's unfortunate. Why do you think Satomura/Nagashima is a piece of shit though? I didn't think it was anywhere near as obnoxious as the Toyota match here. My thoughts on Satomura/Nagashima:
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Post by elliott on Jan 10, 2020 5:41:31 GMT -5
I first watched it back in 02 a month or so after it happened. VHS tapes were expensive back then and could take 3-6 weeks to arrive. I had been growing increasingly disillusioned with modern wrestling. RINGS turned to shoots effectively ending the worked careers of Tamura & Han, the AJPW split, death of WCW and ECW, Hash splitting from NJPW, Joshi collapsed, BattlArts was about to close, I was sick of the M-Pro/Toryumon style, etc etc. CMLL was largely still great, but Japan was becoming a major turn off overall for me. The excessive bombs, nearfalls, fighting spirit, pop-up no selling to hit a big move, slap fests etc was grating on me back then. I started to spend more time looking at old school 70s and 80s stuff around this time period because I just disliked the modern style so much. Satomura and Nagashima were different for me though. I still looked forward to their matches. Due to GAEA running a lot of shorter matches and tag matches, it felt like I'd waited forever for a big match between the two. They were young, dynamic, exciting and wrestlers who still excelled at mat work and getting over submissions. So when they finally had this big match in 02 and it was just nearfall trading fighting spirit excess that I hated and that everyone else was doing. I found it super disheartening and pretty much gave up on wrestling for years (this was also around college application time for me, so I had bigger fish to fry). I did make one brief comeback in 03 when I heard about the Angle/Benoit Rumble match and needless to say, I was not pulled back in  I'd probably hate Satomura/Nagashima much less now since I'm not invested in it in the slightest anymore. But in the scope of my personal wrestling fandom, its probably my least favorite match ever. What I enjoy about the Toyota match is its Toyota working as the dominant heavier wrestler slowing the pace. I like when wrestlers work differently than they usually do or their popular narrative. Everytime Robert Gibson plays FIP or Jerry Lawler starts a match off fast, I'm delighted. |
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