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Post by KB8 on Jul 10, 2023 12:54:25 GMT -5
Mariko Yoshida v KAORU (AJW, 8/28/94)
- This wasn't perfect. It was rough around the edges and at times they maybe struggled a wee bit to fill the half an hour, but at the very least they went out and worked something different to just about any AJW midcard match of the time (not that I've seen a ton of the 1994 AJW midcard, mind you). Yoshida is returning to action after nearly two years out with a broken neck and it turns into a minor story point throughout. If you'd only seen wrestling from America you'd be shocked that a broken neck isn't the main focus of the match, sort of like how Shawn Michaels came out of retirement after a slipped disc and everyone worked over his back for the next eight years. KAORU hits a couple piledrivers early and Yoshida's selling for the next little while was sublime, the way she'd snap KAORU into a leglock but immediately have to give it up, clutching her neck like the jolt from dropping to the mat had undone two years' worth of rehab. KAORU would go back to it sporadically throughout the match as well, sometimes just to give herself some distance by punching Yoshida in the neck. It worked every time so it would be hard to fault her. Yoshida never brought the same grappling that she would a few years later, it was very different here, much more scrappy and unrefined, but it was also really compelling. It was always gritty if nothing else. Sometimes she'd just grab KAORU's leg and twist it, whereas in ARSION she'd have turned it into something preposterous and beautiful and KAORU would've been scrambling for the ropes. I did love her putting KAORU in a half crab and tearing away her knee strapping, even biting her on the kneecap while the ref' wasn't looking, then she turned it into an STF where the leg was torqued at a putrid angle. Where the match mostly stood out from other AJW stuff was the pacing, which almost felt like a New Japan match at points. They'd go into stalemates and resets, regroup and come back at each other with different strategies. It meant we got a bit of everything, some matwork, some flying, some striking, a few bombs, but I never really thought they were just doing shit to be doing it. Some of the flying was great, especially KAORU's Asai moonsault, and one of Yoshida's topes where she landed all sideways. When it came to the striking they'd often shit-talk each other before throwing brutal slaps. And for the big high impact stuff, Yoshida practically hitting a Ganso Bomb was ludicrous. As the time limit approaches you kind of know what's coming, the bell ringing as Yoshida is pressing to secure a leglock. When they manage to get it restarted Yoshida comes out fast again, but then the neck comes back to haunt her as KAORU just spikes her with a tombstone. Very nifty.
Mariko Yoshida v Yumi Fukawa (ARSION, 5/8/98)
- It feels like I say this every other time I write anything about her, but my god is Mariko Yoshida a force of nature when she really goes after someone. She takes about 80% of this with Fukawa having to claw for every morsel. Fukawa tries a rolling armbar early on and pretty much whiffs it, so Yoshida looks at her in disgust and stomps on her head. My favourite bit of Yoshida matwork here was how she prevented Fukawa from rolling through on a legbar attempt. The first time she went for that legbar Fukawa did roll through and Yoshida couldn't lock it in. When she grabs it again later Fukawa tries to roll through once more, but this time Yoshida sticks a foot out to stop her, then somehow manages to corral Fukawa's other leg in the process. It probably sounds mundane when you're only reading about it, but it's the micro-details like those that separate the good mat workers from the great ones and Yoshida's attention to detail is magic. Some of the grappling exchanges were excellent, especially when Fukawa was able to keep those exchanges relatively even. Towards the end Fukawa manages to actually put Yoshida in trouble, but then Yoshida grabs her in the middle of the ring and is totally relentless in working through several submission attempts until Fukawa finally succumbs to the inevitable.
Mariko Yoshida v Mikiko Futagami (ARSION, 8/9/98)
- What a wonderful wee eight minutes. It's sort of jarring watching this back to back with Yoshida/KAORU from four years earlier. Obviously Yoshida's aesthetic presentation is much different in '98, but stylistically it's almost night and day difference. She was once again a demon on the mat, ripping Futagami into armbars and leglocks. There was nothing about her act that felt like it needed refining or like she was trying stuff to figure out what she wanted to be -- this was final form Yoshida and it's one of the best things ever. Futagami is hardly a slouch on the ground but, similar to their match from May that year, she needed to rely on the strikes if she was to have a chance. She rocked Yoshida initially with a palm thrust, then later connected with two absolutely brutal koppu kicks. The set up to the second one looked a bit ropey at first, like Futagami was on some All Japan fighting spirit juice after taking a German suplex, but I think she was supposed to flip out of it and just undershot the move in the first place. So we may all sleep easy. I've said this a bunch of times as well and it rings true again; Yoshida is probably the best I've ever seen at making you think she's going to submit to a hold. Part of this is the ARSION house style of course. You can buy someone submitting in six minutes in ARSION because of the shoot style elements and that matches are naturally shorter anyway, whereas if it happened in AJW I doubt I'd be buying it six minutes into a match no matter how good an actress she is. But it is what it is and it's hard to be The Ace while selling plausible vulnerability so early in a match. She never goes half-baked on trying to make the ropes and there's always that seed of doubt in your mind that she'll make it. The finish being what it was here just reinforces that things can end quickly in ARSION, and even the spider queen isn't safe. I love this pairing.
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Post by KB8 on Jul 11, 2023 13:45:40 GMT -5
Shinobu Kandori v Rumi Kazama (LLPW, 8/29/92)
- The main event of the LLPW debut show, and a very WAR-ish one at that. Obviously I thought it ruled. They start out by immediately belting each other in the face, then go into a sort of parity stand-off before Kazama drops to all fours and asks Kandori to wrestle. It was the perfect belligerent response to a stalemate, where Kazama was not only dissatisfied at not having won the previous exchange, but wanted to best Kandori in the next one, even giving her the initiative first. Kandori then waltzed up and punted her clean in the face and I fell out the bed. Not to be outdone Kazama threw about a dozen kicks to Kandori's head and face. A couple of these were putrid and before long the match turned into the perfect joshi approximation of Tenryu v Kitahara. Although I've never seen Tenryu transition from a cross-armbreaker into a cloverleaf with this much ridiculous grace and PROWESS. There were a few suplexes down the stretch that Kandori kicked out of RIGHT at the death and I and every person in the building that night thought Kazama had actually toppled her. In the end it wasn't quite enough, but you can't fault the effort.
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Post by KB8 on Jul 13, 2023 10:16:49 GMT -5
El Canek v Dos Caras (UWA, 2/2/92)
- The primera of this ruled. Canek is sometimes meme fodder due to his late career stuff where he can barely move, but he wasn't yet broken to hell in 1992 and the matwork had a real nice maestro quality to it. I wish they'd gone longer exchanging holds, but it was a brief bit of gracefulness from two guys in their early 40s so still about 15 years away from their lucha peak. Dos Caras is usually a good bet for tying people up in knots and he went after Canek's leg with a vengeance right from the beginning of the segunda. The finish to the fall was a bit weird, something between a gorilla press and a backbreaker where he just kind of rolled Caras down to the mat, but the leg work popped up again in the tercera. People were losing it for every nearfall down the stretch and I thought for sure they were going to go with the double pin finish, so even *I* popped for the clean fall.
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Post by KB8 on Jul 16, 2023 7:30:52 GMT -5
Mayumi Ozaki & Carlos Amano v Megumi Kudo & RIE (Dress Up Wild Fight) (JWP, 4/8/97)
- I always get a kick out of JWP calling a street fight a dress up wild fight. Like the WWF calling Slaughter v Patterson an alley fight. You just kinda come dressed in street clothes and hit someone until they start bleeding and you won't get disqualified for it. This is only the second dress up wild fight I've seen, as the first one, many years ago now, was an Ozaki v Takako Inoue match that I hated. I've since come around some on Ozaki and I always mostly liked Kudo anyway and this was pretty damn good! It probably didn't need to be nearly half an hour long, but they didn't run out of crazy shit to do and the crowd were with them right until the end. I was expecting a whole lot of brawling in amongst the crowd and women getting thrown into rows of chairs. They didn't really do much of that and when they did it was never the central focus. There was always something happening in the ring, whether it was two of them pairing off and trying to kill each other or one person being left in a heap somewhere while the opponents tried to kill her partner. Ozaki and Kudo are obviously the stars. Big Star and lower-ranked partner v Big Star and lower-ranked partner is a pretty hard dynamic to fuck up and both Big Stars were great here. Kudo was awesome as FMW invader coming in to destroy the young Amano, who for her part leaned all the way into being destroyed. I remember when I first tried venturing into joshi, this would've been about 2006, and going through old forum posts from various places Kudo was someone the hardcore weirdos would lust over and fantasise about her stabbing them in the head and whatnot. Well they'd have loved her in this because her whole demeanour was that of a woman who knew she was the business, and I don't know if she stabbed anyone in the head but she fairly walloped the shit out of them. Her demonic grin when she wrapped a chain around Ozaki's neck and started choking her was truly perfect. They did a lot of gnarly shit with that chain, including Ozaki's payback where she used it to tether Kudo to the ring post by the throat. A bit later Kudo wrapped it once more around Ozaki's neck and chucked her out the ring, leaving her to dangle there while her face turned purple. There was some baseball bat stuff that might've been kind of hokey in theory, but it actually worked on account of how hard they laid it in. Someone taping a ball bat to their forearm and throwing a lariat maybe sounds dumb when they could just, you know, wallop that person with the bat. Why would you go to the trouble of taping that bat around your shin just so you can kick someone in the back of the head when you could always just, like, swing the thing like a normal thug? But you know what? The lariat looked wild and the kick even more so and at a certain point you don't have any choice but to throw your hands up and ponder: "who are we to question the inner workings of the dress up wild fight?" Ozaki about took the jaw off RIE with a vile backfist and her shit-eating grin as Kudo could only arrive seconds too late was also quite perfect.
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Post by KB8 on Jul 17, 2023 7:07:15 GMT -5
Genichiro Tenryu & Samson Fuyuki v The Great Kabuki & Takashi Ishikawa (All Japan, 7/8/88)
- We're joined in progress at about the five-minute mark here, with Tenryu trying to bend Ishikawa in half while Kabuki glares at him from the apron. I'm not sure why I'm shocked at this being badass as fuck. Everybody was particularly ornery on the night and if you know anything about these four then you know what that means. The bulk of it was centred around Kabuki and Ishikawa ripping Fuyuki's arm apart. It was really awesome stuff, nothing especially unique but what they did do had some real INTENT behind it. You bought them trying to rip that arm off and beat the man with it. Kabuki took him down with a couple brutal shoulder-breakers, Ishikawa punted him in the armpit, they were torturing him with armbars, it was great stuff. The cut-offs were almost all focused on the arm as well, minus one Kabuki thrust kick that was fucking spectacular. He also threw several amazing uppercuts, as was his wont. My favourite part of this stretch was when Fuyuki was about an inch away from making the tag and Kabuki just pounced on him and wrestled him back into the middle of the ring, Tenryu almost falling into the ring Marty Jannetty style because he was reaching in so far. It looked like Fuyuki did not expect to be prevented from making that tag, but Kabuki must not have been happy with where the heat was yet and decided more sympathy must first be garnered. Kabuki rules, basically. When Tenryu does get the tag he about takes Ishikawa's head off with a lariat. Those two were throwing some of the best shoulderblocks, just smacking shoulder on shoulder. When Fuyuki comes back in you're maybe wishing he'd try and sell that arm a bit more, but then he wallops Kabuki with a lariat and immediately clutches the arm before tagging out. Last couple minutes are super frantic and the finish is brilliant. Ishikawa was for taking none of Tenryu's shit, but Tenryu was for giving him it whether he wanted it or not. They're both laying into each other in the corner while Fuyuki hits a bridging German on Kabuki, then Ishikawa pushes Tenryu back with sumo thrusts and Tenryu falls right into the bridging Fuyuki. Ishikawa then drags Tenryu to the mat and wraps him up while Kabuki puts Fuyuki on his head with a backdrop. This pretty much ruled.
Genichiro Tenryu, Koki Kitahara, Masao Orihara & Don Fujii v Akitoshi Saito, Masashi Aoyagi, Michiyoshi Ohara & Shiro Koshinaka (WAR, 7/27/06)
- An ode to the wrestling and the romance! This was your favourite band from back in the day getting together one last time to play Glastonbury or Coachella or T in the Park (IYKYK). Some of the members are old and can't muster the same energy they once could, but they do their familiar signature bits that everyone wants to see. Sumo Fuji plays the role of one of the deceased band members' kids who's taken up the instrument, not there for the band's heyday but a close enough approximation of what he's replacing that he fits in well. I guess he's the Jarod Clemons to Ashura Hara's Clarence. It made sense that he was the one who got beat up for a stretch and perhaps we all wonder how life might've been for the man had he been a Koki Kitahara trainee rather than an Ultimo Dragon one. The beginning was a real fun throwback to some of the WAR/Heisei Ishingun brawls of yesteryear, with everyone whomping each other with chairs and getting thrown into groups of spectators and scrapping around ringside. Saito was still a fairly prominent figure in NOAH around this point so he got to look the most dominant of his team, fittingly taking the mantle of meathead crowbar from his trainer and former king of crowbar maniacs Masashi Aoyagi. Orihara has one of the best knockout sells of being punched in the face I've ever seen here. I thought he'd legit had his bell rung at first the way he was struggling to stand, but he never looked properly out of sorts after that or struggled to run any of the spots and sequences that followed. I've seen wrestlers knocked loopy to the point where they forget they're supposed to duck on a clothesline or how to take a flat back bump and just need to be rolled out the ring for a minute. It didn't look like him being in there was a hazard to his own health so I'm chalking it up to him doing something awesome, which he did frequently throughout his career.
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Post by KB8 on Jul 19, 2023 7:36:40 GMT -5
Naoki Sano v Masao Orihara (SWS, 9/16/91)
- I love both of these guys. Sano in SWS was in that cool bridge phase of his career between the pro style of New Japan and the shoot style of UWFi, where he was working some PWFG shows along with the SWS ones and trying a bunch of cool quasi shoot stuff across both environments. Here my favourite example was a rolling surfboard into a rear naked choke with a bodyscissors. He has Orihara in a facelock and Orihara starts kicking him in the head to get out, so Sano catches one of those kicks and just rips the kid into a brutal kneebar. Orihara is one of the most fun young whippersnappers ever. Every time out he's willing to take a fucking stomping but he'll fire back heroically and he makes the absolute most of his hope spots. They blow an early sequence built around leapfrogs and missed strikes, but you give him the points anyway as he makes up for it by hitting two incredible dives to the floor. His first was a gorgeous flying cross body, then his moonsault obliterated Sano and I'm thinking Orihara had one of the best moonsaults ever. Sano's great at giving him enough to look like he's going places, but all the same this was Sano's match to dominate. Eventually he decapitates Orihara with a spin kick and folds him with a dragon suplex, and 1991 Sano really did have one of the best offensive arsenals in wrestling.
Kenta Kobashi, KENTA & Tamon Honda v Yoshihiro Takayama, Takuma Sano & Go Shiozaki (NOAH, 4/27/08)
- Let me tell you, if your idea of great pro wrestling is Big Beefy Fellas hitting each other really hard then this is the match for you. Even more than that, if you're into prolonged chop battles where Big Beefy Fellas try and turn each other's chest purple then you want every second of this opening. Ordinarily I'd have turned it off after 30 seconds but it's been a long time since I watched any late-career Kobashi, or CHOPbashi as he was affectionately referred to back in the 2008. He certainly hits like a bastard. This also had at least some semblance of story behind it, as Go was his protégé for a minute there and I guess now they're on opposite sides of the fence. Go wants to prove a point about how MANLY he is and Kobashi is like "no." I don't know, it was stupid but Kobashi's charisma at least makes it compelling to some degree. Prolly. It also led to a great bit where Takayama came in and told Go to get his shit together so Shiozaki elbowed him in the face, so Takayama elbowed him back, and then they proceeded to elbow each other in the face a few more times. Then they both turned and booted Kobashi in the face as it was all a RUSE. I thought KENTA might've been the most fun guy in this as he was in his element getting chippy with Takayama and Sano. He hit three running corner dropkicks to Takayama that easily could've given the big man another stroke, then later Takayama kneed him in the sternum so hard KENTA flew about eight feet in the air. Sano wasn't involved too much until the end, but he gets to close the match out and it was a nice enough showcase.
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Post by KB8 on Jul 21, 2023 16:02:45 GMT -5
Meiko Satomura v Sonoko Kato (GAEA, 10/13/97)
- Where the fuck did this come from??? It's quite frankly stupid that Satomura is 17 years old here. She shouldn't already be this good at something that some people need 10 whole years to get good at. Kato isn't much older (21) and this almost reminded me a joshi version of Tamura/Kakihara from the first UWFi show where they just went out and tore it up like they were the future of the game. Everything they did here was super competitive and crazy intense, but they never really teetered into DOING STUFF~ territory. Even if it was back and forth for most of the 15 minutes they wrestled, I can't recall any transition feeling haphazard or like one of them just decided they wanted to go on offence again. They also absolutely thumped the shit out of each other and sold the toll of it amazingly well. They'd delay their next move after a momentum shift just to sell any previous damage, really milk any strike exchanges, never letting the pace they worked at run high enough where they were blowing stuff off. Satomura was doing all sorts of great counters and blocks to set up submissions, including one quick reversal of something (I don't even remember what it was now) into a sick armbar. Kato would reverse those submission attempts by kicking Satomura in the face and a couple of these were truly vile. Satomura even tagged her back with a high kick of her own from nowhere. The point where Kato turned around and cracked Satomura with a headbutt was insanity, then they traded those headbutts while on their knees, totally unprotected, borderline idiotic. There was just so much stuff here that I wasn't expecting but turned out awesome, and for something I watched completely on a whim it wound up being one of my favourite joshi matches of the year.
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Post by KB8 on Jul 26, 2023 9:44:27 GMT -5
Chigusa Nagayo & Meiko Satomura v Eagle Sawai & Keiko Aono (GAEA, 5/14/95)
- If you couldn't tell from looking at the names, this was established vet and rookie partner v established vet and rookie partner. It starts with the vets barrelling into each other like a couple bighorn rams. After a few collisions they both end up on the canvas, so the rookies come and drag their respective partners back to their corners to tag themselves in, but amusingly Aono can't get Eagle to budge because she's too BEEFY. It was a fun way to set up a couple minutes of Eagle v Satomura and of course the work between them was quality. It's basically Satomura throwing herself - literally - at Eagle and getting nowhere before Eagle gets bored of it all, flattens her and tags in Aono. There was a point during the 90s tape-trading heyday (which I was not a part of as I am MERELY a man in his mid-30s) where Eagle was seen as kind of rubbish. That feels at least unfair, if not downright nonsense, because if nothing else she was a fun bruiser who projected a pretty badass aura and I'm not buying the idea that someone like Kyoko Inoue could work circles around her. She throws Satomura into the ropes so hard that the top rope almost rips the girl's head off, then she squashes her like a bug. Meiko and Aono probably hit three hunner running shoulderblocks when they're in together, or at least a dozen. They don't exactly have a deep well of offence to draw from but they're intense and very spirited. The rookie v rookie stuff was also kept interesting by them both looking to tag out at various points only for their respective big dog to refuse. This was sink or swim and they were getting no life raft unless it was absolutely necessary. Chigusa takes Aono's head off with a spin kick, Eagle lariats Meiko dead in the face, all the while the rookies try valiantly to put a dent in them. At one point Meiko hits about six running dropkicks to Eagle that basically do nothing, then when Eagle whips her across the ring Satomura is so fucked she just falls face first into the ropes. I don't think it was "selling" or at all intentional which made it even better. She'd emptied the clip and had nothing left. Chigusa's "well I'll be damned" face at the end when Satomura tapped Aono was great.
Chigusa Nagayo, Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato v Devil Masami, Tomoko Kuzumi & Tomoko Miyaguchi (GAEA, 8/5/95)
- Another really fun time! I actually thought this was even better than the last one, thanks in part to the inclusion of Devil. I'll level with you all; I don't know the difference between Kuzumi and Miyaguchi so I'll refer to them as the JWP girls. There was lots going on here and the young girls got to go hell for leather, but it never felt messy to me and it certainly helped that Chigusa and Devil were there to hold things together. I liked the start with Kato and one of the JWP girls, Kato accidentally running into Devil on the apron and Devil stepping in like she was going to chop her in half. Devil v Satomura was awesome for the one minute that we got, as Satomura is spunky as all get out and fearlessly runs into the brick wall and tries to scale Devil's body to apply an armbar. When she eventually grabs hold of it Devil sells with just enough concern that the crowd goes nuts, but ultimately you know she's going to pick Satomura up with one arm and powerbomb her. She then powerbombed one of her own students on top of Satomura and that was even better. The youngsters are still scrappy and mostly run through the same few moves, but any time it looked in danger of getting repetitive you had Devil or Nagayo there to freshen things up. There was always the backdrop of one of them coming at any given moment and murdering someone. Some of those veteran/rookie interactions were great, my favourite being when one of Devil's kids went for a springboard and Chigusa kicked her in the throat. Chigusa had one of them in a choke hold, then when the other ran in to break it up Chigusa just grabbed her by the neck and put her in a choke as well. Veteran shooter Chigusa with the extra weight might honestly be my favourite Chigusa and she's super fun in GAEA, which in general I prefer stylistically to the AJW of her peak. You obviously don't get the same level of sympathetic selling as you would against Dump and those cretins, really because she's wrestling with a bunch of teenagers and trainees, but she's a violent ass-kicker and that's every bit as compelling to me. Her interactions with Devil were of course excellent. The finishing stretch is actually really dramatic and much bigger than I would've expected, super heated with the JWP team trying to put away Satomura while Devil keeps her old adversary at bay. You think it's done when Devil and one of her trainees hit a sick doomsday powerbomb, but Chigusa saves it right at the last second and manages to rally her team into a comeback. Satomura has precisely one desperation sunset flip left in her and I'm not sure she even registers that it led to victory in the end.
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Post by KB8 on Aug 2, 2023 9:09:57 GMT -5
Dick Murdoch v Steve Williams (JCP, 7/10/87)
- This sort of handheld footage is a real treat. I would assume it wasn't actually taped for TV and the wrestlers would've known that, so in some ways it gives you the purest look at them. What do they do when the cameras are off? There was that Meltzer talking point from years ago about Murdoch being a lazy house show worker who'd goof around or whatever. I think at this stage the laziness point has been pretty thoroughly nonsense'd, but to be honest I love goofball Murdoch anyway so if more footage of him doing that on house shows was to appear on the internet 30 years later then I wouldn't be complaining. And while this wasn't FULL goofball Murdoch, at least in part because of the context of the feud, we were gifted with ONE of the the absolute best goofball Murdoch moments ever. The stipulation coming in is that Williams can't use the cast on his arm as a weapon or he'll be disqualified, and I'm not sure if it was Murdoch and Eddie Gilbert who broke that arm in the first place but Williams starts by going right after the arm of Murdoch. He has some really nasty stomps to the forearm while his other foot has Murdoch's arm pinned to the mat, very Arn Anderson-ish while Murdoch has to pretend he can't yank the arm away. Murdoch is selling all the way to the back row whenever Williams slams that extended arm down across his shoulder, then Williams picks him up on his back and starts squatting like Murdoch was a weighted rucksack. You knew that Eddie Gilbert skulking around ringside with a cane was going to come into play and of course he distracts the ref' so Murdoch can smash Williams in the arm with it. Murdoch was mean as a bastard working over the arm, but I thought Williams' selling was equally great. He never let you forget the arm was his major weakness, the way he'd sell huge whenever Murdoch stomped it or smashed it into the turnbuckles or hit it with the cane, whereas in contrast he'd sell a stomp to the back or the ribs like something he could shrug off. There was a great bit where he tried to fire up and rush after Murdoch on his knees, Murdoch frantically backing away before shutting Williams down with another kick to the arm. As soon as Williams starts the comeback Murdoch turns the stooging up to 14, first with his spinning top sell of a big vertical suplex, doing about five rotations in place. He throws a punch that Williams blocks with the cast arm, Murdoch sells his own hand (a cool combo of the previous arm work and the fact he just punched a cast), then Williams clocks him and Murdoch's sell of it is quite frankly indescribable. Murdoch falling limp into Williams' arms before being propped up and tagged again really is the best of Captain Redneck. We even got a great finish to boot, with Gilbert's distraction backfiring and Murdoch being met coming off the top with a cast to the jaw.
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Post by KB8 on Aug 8, 2023 8:17:36 GMT -5
Yasha Kurenai v KAORU (GAEA, 4/15/95)
- Exhibit #242 as to why the inter-promotional wrestling rules. Kurenai doesn't have much of a rep, or at least not a good one, and that's a shame because at this point I'm convinced she kind of rules. KAORU seems to be fairly well regarded and I'm beginning to see that she also rules. The crowd is red hot and Kurenai slaps KAORU in the face straight off the bat, so KAORU sends her to the floor and topes head-first into a chair. This was one of those screwball Chris Benoit topes that maybe makes you wince just a bit. Kurenai then chokeslams KAORU on the chair outside, brings her back in the ring and sits her down on it before booting her head off. Kurenai was a seedy witch in this, stamping on KAORU's fingers, biting her wrist and spitting a chunk of it at the referee, whacking her with a stick, working over KAORU's throat. KAORU gets some payback by biting the wrist and stamping on the fingers, then drags Kurenai up the aisle and flings her into a wall before sitting in the chair in the middle of the ring waiting on her. I loved the visual of Kurenai from outside staring at KAORU with open contempt while the latter is entirely indifferent towards her. Kurenai's offence was mostly low level stuff, her biggest shots being springboard legdrops, but that makes her stand out in an era where joshi was going for bigger and bigger. She was fully about getting heat here and she wasn't about to turn anyone to her cause by doing something swank. KAORU on the other hand has the perfect moonsaults. I preferred the opening of this to the stretch run, but the final few minutes made for a really dramatic finish and the nearfalls had people biting big. All it missed was KAORU giving Kurenai a return smack with that stick of hers.
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Post by jetlag on Aug 8, 2023 9:52:20 GMT -5
Yasha IS great. Severely underrated worker, but I'm not surprised anymore considering it took people a long time to come around and love Shinobu Kandori. Yasha also has some fantastic babyface performances.
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Post by KB8 on Aug 8, 2023 12:25:41 GMT -5
I haven't seen as much of her as you but her underdog babyface performance in that 8/97 trios match against Asuka, Shark and Eagle was tremendous. If I'm cherry-picking some LLPW to watch she's always someone I'll look for on a card.
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Post by KB8 on Aug 10, 2023 14:26:55 GMT -5
Tarzan Goto & Sambo Asako v Masa Kurisu & The Shooter #1 (FMW, 5/14/90)
- Talk to me all you like about how 90s All Japan was the pinnacle of using a tag match to set up a big singles encounter; nothing they ever did made me want to shell out my hard-earned cheddar to watch Misawa v Kobashi or Kawada v Akiyama like this made me want to see Tarzan Goto and Masa Kurisu punch each other in the eye for 12 minutes. Kurisu was at his unpleasant best here and I can't think of a wrestler I'd less rather be in the ring with than him. Nothing he ever does looks pulled in the slightest. He was trying to obliterate Asako's eardrums with slaps, clonked him with disgusting headbutts, stomped his face into the canvas, at one point he even came in and kicked him in his big fat arse. All the while Goto aimed to top it by abusing Shooter, who's some guy in a mask who throws a bunch of reckless kicks. Goto matches Kurisu's headbutts every step of the way and then he superkicked Shooter in the throat. He also put the poor fella on his neck with a capture suplex. The best part was when Asako and Shooter were grappling on the mat and Kurisu and Goto both grabbed a chair and started wellying the other two while staring each other out. Of course the eventual Goto/Kurisu pairing ruled. It was brief, but they fucking hammered each other with those headbutts and set up the singles match perfectly. This was bliss.
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Post by KB8 on Aug 11, 2023 14:08:38 GMT -5
El Hijo del Santo, Negro Casas & Atlantis v El Hijo del Perro Aguayo, Tarzan Boy & Hector Garza (CMLL, 8/6/04)
- This was Santo's second match back after his CMLL return. His actual return match was the previous month, which in itself had come after Perrito had recently turned rudo on Casas. I never watched the Santo return match but now I'm thinking I maybe should have just to see where this much animosity came from. Maybe it was just Perro out to take a scalp and no scalp would make more of a statement than El Hijo del Santo's. He jumped Santo at the intros and left him hanging off the ramp, legs in the air while spectators tried to cushion any fall. When Casas and Atlantis got to the ring they were swiftly jumped as well and the primera was really a mauling. The comeback was amazing though, especially Santo's tope after ducking a double clothesline. Perro went flying and the poor bastards in the first row never had time to react so I'm assuming someone's front teeth were lodged in Perro's shoulder blades. While the falls were evened up quickly after the comeback itself, I liked that the tecnicos just continued going after the rudos. This wasn't a case of the comeback culminating with a pinfall or submission - the pinfalls were merely stops on the road and as soon they happened the rudos were on the floor getting thrown into things. Obviously Santo v Perro was the main pairing here and that's what the match was built around, but I did love the brief Casas/Tarzan Boy exchange in the tercera. Tarzan Boy was such a punchable little prick, taking his shirt off and flexing, challenging Casas to a posedown. Of course Casas couldn't be arsed and instead put him on his back, but he did stop to hit the double biceps pose right after it. The finish was great. It came down to Santo and Perro and Santo went for the camel clutch, but as Perro shoved him off Santo flew into the referee. It was a minor ref' bump, nothing big or exaggerated, but it gave Perro his opening and he booted Santo clean in the balls. I will now endeavour to watch their singles match again. It didn't do much for me when I watched it about 10 years ago and that feels stupid.
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Post by KB8 on Oct 21, 2023 9:37:18 GMT -5
Buddy Rose v Frank Dusek (Portland, 2/16/80)
- A ridiculously fun Buddy Rose performance. It's not like it even needs to be said at this point, but the way he'll throw in a bunch of different wrinkles for every match he wrestles is really remarkable. Sometimes those wrinkles will be small, some will be more than wrinkles, all are worthwhile. Dusek wasn't amazing here and maybe he never was, but Rose was at the peak of his powers and didn't need much to work with. Actually, Dusek was fun in the first fall. He wasn't mere hand luggage and he was enough of a canvas for Rose to work off. Dusek had just recently turned babyface and in Portland you could've been the most hated bastard walking but five minutes opposite the Playboy and the fans would be on your side regardless. Bonnema mentions on commentary how Dusek said in an interview that he wasn't about to change the way he wrestles just because he lives on the other side of the tracks now, and sure enough he had no issue cutting corners in the first fall. He never tried to hide it, would throw cheapshots, had zero interest in being a good sport, and Buddy was almost bewildered that people were somehow cheering the fella because of it. Buddy would hesitate to engage and Dusek would keep forcing the issue, popping Rose in the mouth with a jab as Rose tried hiding behind Sandy Barr. Then Rose tried to skirt around the apron by holding onto the post so Dusek just punched him in the fingers and Buddy toppled back. When Dusek comes out after him he grabs a chair, Buddy finally scoots back in the ring and tries to slingshot Dusek in from the apron, but Dusek flips it and slingshots Buddy out to the floor. At one point Dusek basically hit a fucking Slingblade! I mean it was a clothesline but it had enough VIGOUR that we can't help but wonder if Frank Dusek wans't years ahead of his time. Then he makes the mistake of lifting Rose's shoulders off the mat on a 2-count. He should've taken the win when he had the chance because eventually he eats a backdrop on the concrete and Buddy zeroes in on the back to win the first fall. The second fall isn't as compelling because Dusek himself isn't as compelling working from underneath, but I always find Rose engaging when working a heat segment. There was actually one great bit that I'm going to give Dusek the benefit of the doubt on and say he meant it. Buddy had been working over his neck and Dusek went for what looked like a back suplex, which wound up being a sort of Russian leg sweep. Hell maybe he was trying for an ACTUAL Russian leg sweep and I'm giving him even less credit than he deserves. The cool part was how he hit it and immediately grabbed his neck, unable to follow up, which allowed a groggy Rose to capitalise first. Piper and Bass get involved in the third fall and Rose hollering about how Piper shoved him in the gluteus maximus was amazing. Rose is in that real elite tier of wrestlers where I feel like literally every match they've ever had is worth watching. Rose, Tenryu, Funk, Han, Fujiwara, the Tonga Kid...it's a hell of a club to be a part of.
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