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Post by fxnj on Jul 23, 2018 8:25:35 GMT -5
Everybody's doing it, so I figured I'd start my own thread.
Matches watched so far
***** 19970120 Misawa vs. Kobashi 19980612 Kawada vs. Kobashi
****7/8 19931203 Misawa/Kobashi vs. Kawada/Taue 19961206 Misawa/Akiyama vs. Kawada/Taue 19970606 Misawa vs Kawada 19980724 Kobashi vs. Akiyama
****3/4 19381118 Londos vs Nagurski 19731009 Destroyer vs. Mascaras 19830921 MS-1 vs Sangre Chicana 19840907 Fujiwara vs. Tiger 19890810 Liger vs. Sano 19940728 Williams vs. Misawa 19950413 Kawada vs. Kobashi 19970919 Santo vs Casas 20150329 Reigns vs Lesnar
*****5/8 19600608 Jesse James vs Al Costello 19741120 Gagne vs. Robinson 19810923 Andre vs. Hansen 19840419 5-on-5 Gauntlet 19920714 Tenryu/Orihara vs Kabuku/Kitahara 19940124 Kong vs Hotta 19940320 Bret vs Owen 19951025 Kawada vs. Albright 19951025 Misawa vs. Kobashi 20090405 Undertaker vs Michaels
****1/2 19500621 Thesz vs Rogers 19690516 Inoki vs. Markoff 19830709 Piper vs. Valentine 19940416 Kawada vs. Williams 19950408 Taue vs. Kawada 19951219 Zaza vs. Kosaka 19960716 Han vs Kohsaka 19960724 Kawada vs. Albright 19961206 Dandy vs Santo vs Casas 19980114 Tenryu vs Araya 20030330 Hogan vs McMahon 20040516 Eddie vs JBL 20091003 Kawada/Taue vs. Akiyama/KENTA 20120429 Cena vs Lesnar 20150222 Bryan vs. Reigns
****3/8 19500331 Thesz vs Anaya 19510126 Thesz vs Rogers 19520627 Gagne vs Schmidt 19930521 Hansen vs. Misawa 19940404 Hashimoto vs. Fujinami 19940610 Vader vs. Tamura 20110213 Kana vs Satomura 20130818 Kana vs Nakajima 20150125 Fenix vs Mil Muertes 20151223 Shirai vs Satomura
****1/4 19900210 Vader vs. Hansen 19950617 Han vs. Yamamoto 19960724 Taue vs. Kobashi 20020223 Low Ki vs Danielson vs Daniels 20020923 Takayama vs. Misawa 20080919 Blue Panther vs Villano V 20130818 Lesnar vs Punk
****1/8 19630515 Golden Moose Cholak vs Larry Chene 19860504 Savage vs Santana 19910113 Santo vs Brazo de Oro 19910904 Hansen vs. Kobashi 20030606 Taue vs. Nagata 20050225 Mistico vs Ultimo Guerrero 20070825 Danielson vs Morishima
**** 19781100 Flair vs Steamboat 19920712 Vader vs Sting 19971021 Kobashi vs. Misawa 20010414 Kawada vs. Mutoh 20040418 Orton vs Cactus 20060716 KENTA/Marufuji vs. Rikioh/Morishima 20091015 Marvin vs. KENTA 20130818 Cena vs Bryan
***3/4 19830930 Espectro Jr./Satanico/MS-1 vs Cota/Chicana/Fiera 19840616 Santana vs Valentine 19850911 Fujiwara vs. Tiger 19901214 Dandy vs Satanico 19960429 Hashimoto vs. Takada 20041002 Joe vs Danielson 20051008 KENTA vs. Tenryu
***1/2 19770305 Jumbo vs. Robinson 19890526 Satanico vs Chicana
***1/4 19841122 Gordy vs Khan
*** 20170808 Suzuki vs. Okada
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Post by fxnj on Jul 23, 2018 8:34:07 GMT -5
Watched: 19930521 Hansen vs. Misawa
This is a lot more formulaic than I remembered. Pretty much Misawa formula with Hansen dominating most of the much until the champ slowly manages a comeback in the last third using his elbows to cruise to victory. Still, this is a very well done formula match with lots of chaos and unpredictability in the early going to set up for Hansen taking over. The work from Hansen on Misawa's elbow is pretty basic and I would have liked for Misawa to try more attempts at countering the holds, but Hansen still manages to carry that section pretty well with his charisma. It really stood out to me how reactive the crowd was to submission attempts and near falls off of lower ranking moves here. Once Misawa makes his comeback, they go nuts several times for him when he applies his facelock, which surprised me after watching so much from the latter half of the decade. Some neat psychology in play as well with Misawa relying on using the facelock with his fresh arm as his main offensive move while saving the elbow for the knockout blow at the end. Not as ground breaking as I remembered, but still holds up as an excellent match today. ****3/8
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Post by Cap on Jul 23, 2018 15:59:43 GMT -5
I hope you don't mind me making a suggestion. I am going to try to go back and do this for the last few rounds of reviews I have done as well (did it for round 1, but then slipped), but it would be great if you could copy and paste individual match thoughts into the threads for the match too. You certainly don't have to, but if you get a minute it would help keep those individual match threads up to date with people's thoughts.
As an aside, I am pumped to see people posting out their watching/rewatching. Lots of good stuff starting to bubble up here.
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Post by fxnj on Jul 24, 2018 4:20:07 GMT -5
Watched: 19840907 Fujiwara vs. Tiger
I have seen this match a few times before and it never really did much for me, an I have no clue why. What a classic this was. The dynamic is one of athleticism vs technique with Tiger as the freak athlete who's already achieved while Fujiwara is the technical wizard Fujiwara who hasn't had as much success, but has a big bag of tricks that he can unload. In the beginning you've got Fujiwara just toying with Tiger, effortlessly throwing him around and eating him up on the mat. Tiger tries to hold his own, but it quickly becomes apparent that he's outmatched on the ground. There's even a point where he grabs Tiger's leg and looks like he could easily take him down but just lets it go to make a statement. He turns to his stiff kicks to turn the tide an manages to score some big shots just from how fast he can throw strikes, but it just manages to make Fujiwara angrier and he goes to town on Tiger's legs. The finish is some epic stuff with Tiger really digging deep to turn the tide where he can barely even stand. Through the whole way, they do such a great job of making everything look hard fought. I really dug all the loud grunts they did while in submissions. Made everything feel so gritty. They work in a lot of pro wrestling style moves in unique shooty ways, and in a way that's even more compelling than just straight shoot-style. It's the kind of match where you really have to pay full attention to what's going on to appreciate all the little details they work in, and you can't just zone out. ****3/4
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Post by fxnj on Jul 24, 2018 4:57:06 GMT -5
Watched: 20030606 Taue vs. Nagata
This match has generally been regarded as one of Taue's finest moments as it's him going out with a guy who wasn't really seen as being that great a worker and delivering a great match where he's got the crowd in the palm of his hands the whole time. Pretty simple story here as you've got Taue trying his best to put away Nagata from the get-go but just not having an answer for his submissions. Taue is great in getting Nagata over with his selling, and Nagata plays to the crowd pretty well as a heel. The crowd is really hot throughout, especially for the finishing run. I would have liked for Nagata to have been more fluid looking in his submissions given how he worked as the technical wizard, but the match is too short for it to become an issue. Not a classic, but I always love watching Taue show how great he can be. ****1/8
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Post by fxnj on Jul 24, 2018 7:11:55 GMT -5
19630515 Golden Moose Cholak vs Larry Chene
This is from 1963 but it feels nothing like that. It's structured more like something you might see from 90's onwards, and I'd even say it's more impressive than a lot of similar matches from modern times. Both guys build the match around athletic spots and stiff brawling with the matwork being pretty minimal compared to what you might expect from this period. Cholak is the big man heel champ and Chene is the flying babyface, and they're both at home working their roles. The match follows a similar pattern to what you might see in CMLL matches with the bad guy controlling with clubbering blows and throwing around the face en route to winning the first fall, the face making a comeback to win the end of the 2nd fall, and the 3rd fall being mostly even, but I thought it escalated much better than most CMLL matches I've seen. They start off with basic stuff, then Cholak headbutts Chene with his head gear to bust him open, then Chene gets revenge by busting Cholak open with a shoe, and then it's a double juice brawl to a time limit draw. Everything just felt so natural with things slowly progressed from trying to control the match into just wanting to hurt the other guy. It took me out of it a bit how neither guy seemed in a hurry to finisher while the time keeper was screaming that only a few minutes were left, but you could say it was part of the story that they didn't really care about finishing by that point. With a tad more compelling stretch run this could have been a classic, but still well worth checking out. ****1/8
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Post by fxnj on Jul 24, 2018 7:51:53 GMT -5
Watched: 19770305 Jumbo vs. Robinson
Not a bad match or anything, but a bit of a disappointment as I was hoping for it to be on par with Robinson's mat classics with Bock, Gagne, and Inoki, and the matwork doesn't come close to that level. It's basically a clash between Billy's European style and Jumbo's NWA style. By that, I mean you've got Robinson doing all kinds of cool counter attempts while Jumbo is just kind of content to spend the match sitting in these basic holds. I really wasn't a fan of how Jumbo worked the 2nd fall. After winning the first fall, he just seemed content to spend a long stretch sitting in a side headlock while Billy tried various ways to counter until he finally scored a backdrop. You could say the psychology was that Jumbo was trying to cruise to a win knowing he had the upperhand, but it would have been a far more exciting match if he instead tried to press the advantage and try to win two falls straight. Besides that, I also disliked how the match was layed out with them abandoning the matwork entirely and going all out with big throws for the finish run of every fall. Whereas they did a good job making everything on the mat looked hard fought, the big moves comparatively seemed to come too easy. It really doesn't feel natural to have one section where they do nothing but matwork and then another with nothing but throws instead of making more effort to blend them together. Despite all that, it's prime Robinson and there's a certain baseline to how good a long mat-based match him can be. ***1/2
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Post by fxnj on Jul 24, 2018 11:06:21 GMT -5
19951219 Zaza vs. Kosaka Hell of a gem from RINGS here. Sort of Tamura/Han part 0 in that it's the European leg lock wizard against the Japanese with shoot credentials, and I think it's right up there with those matches. Pretty much balls to wall action from the start with them pulling out all kinds of incredible submissions and counters from the beginning. I loved Kosaka's performance in selling the frustration. He showed a lot of heart, but it always seemed like Zaza was just one step ahead. There's a ton of breathtaking sequences here, but my favorite happened around the middle of the match with Kosaka hitting a beautiful rolling guillotine just for Zaza to reverse it into a calf crusher. I thought they did a great job milking all the submissions and building up tension so it didn't just feel like a matwork spotfest. Amazing finish with Zaza doing a judo throw and turning it into a brutal looking armbar. If you dig shoot-style, drop what you're doing and watch this. ****1/2 www.dailymotion.com/video/xvpau6
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Post by fxnj on Jul 26, 2018 16:34:32 GMT -5
Watched: 19741120 Gagne vs. Robinson
Absolute masterpiece in working basic holds and making the most out of the little things. I've gone on before before that there should be a lot more in working than the guy selling making funny faces while the guy on offense changes things, and this is a perfect example of that. It might be the last great match worked in the style you can trace back to Londos and Thesz. Though the holds are all just basic armlocks and headlocks, they get tons of mileage out of them. Rather than just selling the pain, you see the guy put in a hold constantly looking for ways out of it and struggling to relieve the pressure. Conversely, and almost as importantly, the guy who applies the holds is always wrenching it in an looking for a way to improve his positioning. The headlock work in here is tremendous. You can see Robinson grinding his arms and smothering Gagne with his whole body, which is exactly how matwork should be in my view. It should be struggle involving every part of body with none of that bullshit with some dude grabbing an armlock while the other guy pretends he can't just use his other arm to punch out of it. The match also sidesteps the issues I had with the layout of the Jumbo in that they make all the big moves look hard fought and never abandon the matwork completely. There's a great spot in the middle of that headlock work I mentioned where Gagne momentarily escapes, and just when it looks like Robinson is gonna go for it again he ends up faking him out and hitting a neckbreaker. There's also a short section where Gagne suddenly hits a lightning fast a flurry of tackles in a moment reminiscent of weird speed ups at the end of the falls in the Jumbo match, except here it's worked in as if Gagne was just trying to catch Robinson off-guard and regain control.
Besides the quality of the matwork, this really is an excellent match in creating a sense of both guys having a clear strategy and there being logic underlying ever move. After getting dominated on the mat, Gagne catches Robinson off-guard with a sleeper to win the grueling mat battle that was the first fall, and he makes sure to press the action in the beginning of the second. Robinson does a great job selling the grogginess from the sleeper and it's really cool how he tries to back away and create space while Gagne keeps going for the sleeper again. Robinson scores a surprise backbreaker for the comeback second fall, and we get some great work around the bear hug in the third fall. Even the cop-out finish is kind of cool as they tease a double countout but manage to make it back in ring but soon end up in a double knockout from how spent they are from the war they just went through. ****5/8
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Post by fxnj on Jul 26, 2018 17:22:39 GMT -5
Watched: 19840419 5-on-5 Gauntlet
This is possibly the best crowd ever in terms of sheer sustained heat. People like to moments like title wins or big moves where the crowd exploded, but here they're going nuts from the opening bell and never let up for any of the match's 70+ minute duration. Quite the feat. The booking and work quality and top notch as well. First pairing is Fujinami/Kobayashi, which involved them both working hard and Kobayashi really looking like he wanted to pull off the upset, but I never really bought him having much of a chance. Match gets going into high gear when it's Fujinami against Teranishi, though, with how mercilessly he goes after Fujinami's wrist. After he gets eliminated, it's Yatsu's turn, and I think he might be the MVP of the match. Perfect for him to beat Fujinami with a sleazy foot stuck in rope count-out win. I thought the Yatsu/Takada pairing that followed might have been the highlight. I love how they work the whole thing as one long sprint, which is crazy considering it's coming in the middle of a long gauntlet match. After some blistering paced action, Yatsu hits a backdrop a few minutes in and Takada sells it like he might be about to get pinned. Instead, Yatsu can't keep him down and it just serves as the point where the match reaches a new level of heat. Yatsu wins and goes on to put on a hard effort against Kimura, he's too spent to have much of a shot. After that, Hamaguchi comes in and the match goes in a different but still awesome direction. Initially I questioned why he was doing all kinds of stalling bullshit instead of capitalizing on Kimura's potential fatigue from the prior pairing with Yatsu. I realized, though, that even if he might not have been taking advantage of Kimura's physical fatigue, he was absolutely taking advantage of Kimura's mental fatigue by wearing him psychologically until he found just the right opening. We get some nice action, but Hamaguchi barely manages to keep him down. After that we get another high point of the match as Fujiwara comes out guns blazing against Hamaguchi and seems determined to not let him pull out any of the tricks he did against Kimura. So of course Hamaguchi goes straight for the old cut on Fujiwara's head. They work a really heated bout built around the classic heel vs. face dynamic that culminates Fujiwara forcing a double count-out, which leads to him having this great look of smugness in aftermath.
I've seen people criticize the Inoki/Choshu as a disappointment because of how they focused on matwork and Inoki didn't really give much to Choshu, but I think that sort of thing misunderstood the idea behind Fujiwara's sacrifice. After Hamaguchi and the rest of Choshu's team tried all kinds of shenanigans to steal the match, the forced double countout finish served as the ultimate middle finger to all that by forcing the final match of the gauntlet to be a no-nonsense contest where Inoki could show everyone that he was the better man than Choshu. Anyway, I thought the Choshu/Inoki pairing felt epic and it was exactly what I wanted to see at that point with lots of great struggle but Inoki ultimately having an answer for everything Choshu tried. We get a pretty cool near fall for Choshu as he hits a surprise lariat and goes for the Scorpion Deathlock, but Inoki escaped and hits some big moves en route to finishing Choshu with the manji hold. They did a great job milking the fight to apply the hold and it was cool how Choshu insisted on going out on his shield by refusing to submit. This felt like the perfect feud blow-off overall and really got me wanting to go back and watch the Choshu/Fujinami epics from 1983 as well as some of the wild 6-mans leading up to this. This match encapsulates the peak of Inoki-led NJPW and things would never really be same afterwards with the UWF exodus and Choshu's guys leaving later in the year.
As much as I've praised this match, though, I will admit that it simply feel like the sort of slam-dunk best match of the 80's that I thought it was when I saw it for the DVDVR voting despite not really having any real flaws I could think of. I've come up with a few reasons for why this might be, none of which are related to the quality of the work. Firstly, I probably just wasn't as invested in this feud from watching it cold compared to going through the 80's set and seeing all the lead-ins. Secondly, and more frustrating, the only version that seems to be available is a blurry cap from the original broadcast with only the Choshu/Inoki finale available on NJPW world. After getting used to the pristine quality of the Japanese promotions from this period thanks to DVD releases, classics reairings, and even comm tapes, it caught me off-guard to see such a great and important match in such poor quality. A real shame that NJPW doesn't seem to have put more effort into canonizing their best matches as a similar issue also seems to plague other classics, such as Liger/Sano 8/10/1989, but it doesn't take too much away from what these men did here. ****5/8
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Post by fxnj on Jul 28, 2018 15:44:50 GMT -5
Watched: 19950413 Kawada vs. Kobashi
In a world without Tamura/Kohsaka this would probably be the greatest 30 minute draw of all time and it's also likely the second best Kawada/Kobashi match to 6/12/98, though I need to rewatch the 10/96 match to be sure. I always felt the 1/95 60 match dragged as they just didn't have enough stuff to fill the time. This match is comparatively much tighter and more smartly laid out. The premise for this is that after getting taken to a draw earlier in the year, Kawada is in a position where losing to Kobashi would signal that he's been passed by, so Kawada really has his back to the wall. Kobashi has all the physical tools needed to win, but he doesn't have the same level of big match experience which manifests later in the match.
The first half of this reminds me of what an underrated mat worker Kawada is. He's not "slick," nor does he work these intricate sequences, but he's great at making everything he does look painful and hard fought. He gets some excellent mileage out of an abdominal stretch followed by a surfboard test of strength. Later, Kawada reuses the same Boston crab variation where he's got his foot on the opponent's face used in the Taue match a few days earlier, but it feels so much more brutal here from the legwork setting it up and how Kobashi sells it.
The basic story of this match is pretty simple. After some even mat and striking exchanges, Kobashi hurts his knee and Kawada takes over by working over it. Kobashi turns the tide by working over Kawada's own injured knee, though, leading to an even stretch run where the time expires just when it looks like Kawada might come out on top. Similar to 6/12/98, though, what's really interesting to me is the underlying theme of the match is one of one-upmanship. Each guy wanting to show they're higher on totem pole by beating the other at their own game. You can see that in just about everything they do, from the early emphasis on the test of strength and strike exchanges, to the dueling leg work in the match's middle act, to even the finishing stretch where powerbombs are the key moves for both guys. I noticed a few Kawada beatdown sequences that seemed recycled in 6/12/98, but even they were interesting for the difference in how Kobashi reacts. Whereas 6/12/98 was characterized by him looking for just the right opening to turn the tide, here he's more like a bull intent on engaging Kawada just about any time he has his senses about him. Here, Kawada is the guy who finds openings.
Another point of comparison to 6/12/98 that I found interesting was the absence of Kobashi's lariat as a finishing move. In my review, I noted the irony of how in a style built on these complex throws it was such a simple move that proved the difference maker. Since Kobashi didn't have the lariat yet, those more intricate maneuvers are all he has, and that bites him. There's this one point where he hits two powerbombs in quick succession, and he tries to stand Kawada up and irish whip him to set up for something, but Kawada just crumbles onto the canvas. Kobashi quickly goes for a leg drop, but Kawada kicks out and you get the feeling that gap between moves was what gave Kawada just enough time to recover and save the match for him. If Kobashi just hit a quick lariat, he probably would have won right there. Kobashi tries to follow up with a dragon suplex, but Kawada has regained his senses and soon regains control with a backdrop.
Besides the psychology, just the way the way they get the crowd into the nearfalls makes for a great spectacle. I've heard people say the AJPW guys weren't that great at doing 2.9 style kickouts, but that isn't the case here. When Kawada hits the powerbomb for the first time, Kobashi gets his shoulder up at basically the last possible moment and I actually rewound it just to make sure it wasn't late. A little thing like that added a ton to the feeling that any move could end it. The crowd was molten for the whole stretch run, stomping their feet for what felt like a long time after all the big nearfalls. I also love how Kawada kept selling the knee to give the appearance of it stopping him from capitalizing as much he wanted to, which added a great wrinkle of depth so it wasn't just big move after big move. I've seen Kobashi criticized for not selling his knee down the stretch, but I think it's alright as Kawada worked over leg that wasn't bandaged up. In any case, those last few minutes with Kawada desperately trying to finish Kobashi were truly some off the charts stuff. I had already seen this match and knew they were going the full 30, but I still found myself thinking maybe I had misremembered and Kawada somehow won. The gong at the end felt like an arrow through my heart. ****3/4
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Post by fxnj on Jul 28, 2018 18:58:34 GMT -5
Watched: 20040418 Orton vs Cactus
I had feared going in that maybe a match like this wouldn't have much effect on me after having seen a lot of indy deathmatches, but my fears were misplaced as they mostly built the match around the building to the spots and selling. I really appreciate how sudden they made all they big spots feel, which is a far cry from the sort of deathmatches I'm used to where they'll spend forever on setting things up. I have to admit that I wasn't too into the early stuff, though. Foley is a hardcore legend and the best he can do is try to blade Orton's forehead using barbed wired? I did get into it, though, after the barbed board is brought in and Foley takes a sick bump on it that busts open his arm. The signature spot of the match is Orton's bump off a failed RKO on the thumbtacks and his reaction, which still held up pretty well to me. I also loved the things surrounding it with how arrogant he was acting before the spot and how afterwards he is in such shock that Foley easily scores a roll-up for a near-fall. The spot where they brawl into the back has never really sat well with me, though, as it's kind of obvious they just did it to get the thumbtacks out of Orton's hand. I also felt the finish came out of nowhere (no pun intended). Would have liked more of an offensive run from Orton before the second RKO, or at least for it to have been on thumbtacks as a callback to the spot from earlier. Still a very well put together and performed deathmatch. It's got some sick spots, but at its core, it's about a young prospect being dragged into the deep waters by a legend and finding it in himself to get the win, and it succeeds at that. ****
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Post by fxnj on Jul 28, 2018 21:09:43 GMT -5
Watched: 20030330 Hogan vs McMahon
Now this is my style. There's some matches that I can watch and acknowledge their technical greatness in an analytical sort of way, and then there's other that draw me in in a visceral from the opening bell. Considering my face muscles were sore from how much I was smiling while watching this, I'd say this falls in that latter camp. Stylistically, it's pretty much the closest thing you'll see to an old man bum fight on WWE's stage, made surreal by the fact that it's WWE's founder it's biggest star having such a match. They brawl, bleed all over the place, and kill each other with nasty chair shots all the while moving at 3/4's speed and bumping in the most gingerly way possible. I'm cheap, so I could only find the Spanish language version online in decent quality, but I think I might have actually preferred it to the English language version from how the guy goes crazy when his colleague gets nailed by a wild Hogan chairshot and how he calls the rest of the match in a tone of exasperated disbelief. People who dig Black Terry's brawls really ought to check this one out with fresh eyes as it hits all the same chords of watching old men doing things they really shouldn't be doing but from which one can't look away.
Through all this, there's actually a pretty compelling story underlying it that's set up by the fantastic video package addressing the question of who ultimately created Hulkamania. To McMahon, Hogan was just a random guy slotted into the top spot of the promotion that he built with his hands alone. He sets out to not only beat Hogan but to do through stealing all of Hogan's trademarks to really drive his point home. I thought McMahon put on a heel performance for the ages here. First, we get him working Hogan's arm a bit just so he can try (and fail) to beat him in a test of strength. Later, he hits that leg drop from the top rope that he plays perfectly with how he half-assedly cups his ear Hogan-style being doing it. Then he really starts selling his disbelief. That shot of him pulling the steel pipe out from under the ring legendary. I also have to mention him going crazy on the ref with him botching the toss out and of the ring and getting even angier just adding to the old man spectacle. I don't mean to cut Hogan short, though, as his presence added a lot to the match and he did exactly what you would want him to do.
Structure-wise this is basically a Hogan formula with the heel dominating most of the match and being responsible for much of the match's entertainment value until Hogan wins with a leg drop. If there were ever a match that should follow such a formula, though, it would be this one. I mentioned before the story about McMahon wanting to show Hogan as just another guy, and that leads to an incredible irony. We see all kinds of crazy things in the name of McMahon overcoming Hogan like the aforementioned leg drop off a ladder, an awesome Piper run-in, and some crooked shenanigans. After all that, though, it ends just like any other Hogan match with him pointing the finger, hitting the leg drop, and then posing. After McMahon tried so hard to show that Hogan was ultimately just another face, Hogan proved that McMahon was just another heel. ****1/2
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Post by fxnj on Jul 29, 2018 17:52:02 GMT -5
Watched: 19841122 Gordy vs Khan
Watched this after seeing the high praise it got here and I have to admit to being a bit puzzled. It just seemed like an average 80's blood brawl. They punched each other, did their signature spots, bled, and then did some screwy finish. Compared to those great WWE brawls I watched yesterday, I found the match lacking in the sort of sense over-the-top brutality that I enjoy out of these matches, or really many great moments at all. Until the finish, I didn't see any reason why I was supposed to be rooting against Khan as him and Gordy pretty much wrestled the same way. Where's the brass knuckles, low blows, and underhanded interference? I'm not sure if it was a no DQ match, but if it wasn't I think they booked themselves into a corner having a Von Erich as referee as you can't have much rule-bending without making the ref look like a buffoon. The angle at the end with Gordy and Kerry teaming up was pretty cool, but as said it just didn't feel like Khan was such a great evil that it warranted such fierce rivals teaming up to take down his stable. ***1/4
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Post by fxnj on Jul 29, 2018 18:33:01 GMT -5
Watched: 19960429 Hashimoto vs. Takada
Borderline great match, but I have to admit to being disappointed as I was hoping for this to be a classic as I remembered it to be and it wasn't close to that. There were some cool standing exchanges, but there wasn't much drama as the match establishes early on that Hashimoto has no issues dictating the action both on the mat and trading leg kicks. Late in the match when it starts to look like Takada might have Hashimoto rocked, he shuts him down by busting out this legsweep which, though an awesome moment, made it clear right there that Takada had no chance regardless of what he tried. The last few minutes were also kind of cool with Takada desperately trying in vain to avoid Hashimoto's killer moves. This also had an excellent crowd who didn't seem fazed at all by my perceptions of the match lacking drama and were hot as hell to see their promotion's hero take back the title. Tokyo Dome has always struck me as a building with poor acoustics, so it really stands out to me to hear them be as hot as they were here. I think I might have been more excited if I watched it in the context of it being the blow-off to the NJPW/UWFi feud with Hashimoto re-establishing NJPW as the center for legitimacy, rather than expecting an epic back-and-forth battle. ***3/4
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