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Sammo~!

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Posts posted by Sammo~!

    SECRET SANTO 2023~!

    in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

    Posted · Edited by Sammo~!
    Added spoiler boxes to break up walls of text

    This has been an exceedingly busy and emotionally draining holiday season for me. So my apologies on dragging my feet on these writeups. But I've been snowed in for two and I have the time and bandwidth for the important things right now: Pro Wrestling. So here we go 

    First things first. I still owe @Gordi the former AEW fan a review from the last Secret Santo: 

    Jaguar Yokota vs La Galactica 9/17/84
     

    Spoiler

    This is one of those matches that I’ve read about, but have never had the pleasure of watching. From the jump Jaguar Yokota is getting mobbed by the fans. The fans are going absolutely bonkers. 1980s AJW crowds are forever incredible. La Galactica storms out in one of the coolest ring jackets I’ve ever seen and jumps Yokota from behind. A bunch of referees and officials jump in to break things up but not before Galactica gets in a couple of cheap shots. Somehow Jaguar Yokota gets cut on the leg in the melee. Shas this amazing face that’s a mixture of rage, indignation, shock, and intent. Galactica is gonna get it. Yokota is too pissed for the flower girls, you love to see it. I guess at this point I should talk about the elephant in the room: the English commentary on this match is butts. I had to tune it out by pretending it was a viewing party and they were the two friends in the room who didn’t know about pro wrestling. Luckily the wrestling was captivating enough, and the original Japanese commentary was unmuted enough that I was able to largely ignore it.

    La Galactica is such a great bully heel. She goes straight for the open wound on Yokota’s leg. Taking her down, biting and scratching and getting a couple of nasty looking half-crabs in the ropes. Every time Jaguar tries to create any space, she’s immediately swarmed by Galactica with leg kicks and cheap shots. Eventually Galactica miscalculates and gets sent over the top rope, giving Yokota a chance to catch her breath. The next part of the match is a lot more 50/50. Yokota takes Galactica down with a couple of drop-toe holds and tries to slow things down Galactica is still largely in control however, and every time it feels like Yokota starts to get any kind of advantage she’s pretty quickly shut down by something: knee to the face, tope suicida, tombstone. They brawl to the outside, and Galactica comes back bleeding through her mask.

    Jaguar Yokota’s comeback is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Every big move that Galactica hits, Yokota just keeps getting up. She’s fighting for every inch. Her face tells the entire story. Whenever time the camera catches her face you can see she’s 100% powered by “fuck you” energy. There is no way she’s losing this. You can feel her defiance through the screen, it was unreal. One of my favorite recurring Joshi bits is the bridging kickout. It’s probably easier to just throw one shoulder up, but bridging out of the pin is a much more direct display of your willpower. The home stretch sees Yokota bridging out at 2 after several huge moves, including a tombstone piledriver. Galactica goes for a 2nd Tombstone and Yokota flips it over and turns it into a tombstone of her own. And now it’s Galactica’s turn to bridge out at 2. Yokota eventually ducks a Galactica clothesline with a forward handspring, the kind you see in just about every modern open chain-wrestling exchange. But the way this handspring was shot, low angle from the apron, Jaguar Yokota partially backlit and obscured by a spotlight on the ceiling, so you’re not able to get a complete view of the flip, except for the absolute roar of the crowd. It made that seemingly basic flip feel like the climax of an incredible battle, and wouldn’t you know it? Jaguar Yokota hits a german suplex immediately afterward and gets the win. What an incredible match. Thanks for sharing, sorry it took so long to get to this, more for my sake.



     

    On 12/11/2023 at 12:03 AM, HeadCheese said:

    @sammo Giving you Jiro Kuroshio vs. Seigo Tachibana from Wrestle-1 (5/6/2018)

    https://youtu.be/7qTMg4A3UUQ?si=l_w_v89EW-vGa95f

    Jiro Kuroshio vs. Seigo Tachibana from Wrestle-1 (5/6/2018)
     

    Spoiler

    I’m going into this match completely blind. I haven’t seen any Wrestle-1 at all and I’m not really familiar with either wrestler. I know Jiro Kuroshiro becomes Ikemen Jiro in NXT, but after watching this match I can officially say I’ve seen more Jiro Kuroshiro matches than Ikeman Jiro matches, so there’s that. Right away they’re going over the rules of the SPECIAL HARDCORE MATCH, which just seems like you’re typical WWE-style hardcore match with the use of all kinds of zany weapons. Shoutouts to the ANYWHERE HOLD rule though, it’s good to know where you can and can’t HOLD.

    The match starts off with Jiro holding … something? I have no idea what it is, it’s like a mesh fence with a metal base, is it a traffic divider? Baseball backstop? Some kind of construction barrier? Who can say! Jiro is using it as a shield however. Tachibana is dual wielding a steel chair and a kendo stick. We’re going ham immediately. They jostle for position and Tachibana drops the chair and is just using the kendo stick, he manages to disarm Jiro of the security barrier-thingie and Jiro immediately goes for an umbrella to defend himself. I just want to say that I really appreciate Tachibana selling his kendo stick bouncing off of Jiro’s umbrella like it’s made of vibranium. Just top-tier cheese. I adored that little touch. The next gag is even better though, they do the bit from every samurai flick and anime where they slide past each other with their weapons, and both men freeze in their slashing poses and…it’s Jiro that falls! We’re off to a great start.

    The middle part of the match becomes kind of a tedious walk-and-brawl. Jiro goes into the audience and starts to go shopping, they’re giving him all kinds of weird items to use as weapons: a squeaky toy hammer, a wooden dagger, a pineapple. At this point they’re brawling through the audience and just hitting one another with comical plunder. There is the stiffest pineapple shot I’ve ever seen in my life. At one point Jiro sells a rubber chicken like a bullet to the chest. Jiro performs a mongolian chop and claps Tachibana over the ears while holding two eggs. It’s pretty gross, that’s how you get ear salmonella. Tachibana tries to get up and is slipping on the egg all over the floor and I swear he just said “fuck it” and took a really ugly back bump on to the concrete.  

    The match makes its way back to the ring and Tachibana hits Jiro over the head with a laptop and goes for the first pin of the match. Now we’re building contraptions out of chairs and kendo sticks and that weird fence/barrier/thingie and just doing whatever big moves we can through them. This part of the match felt like it was on fast-forward to me. It didn’t feel like any of these huge moves through all the furniture was doing any damage to either the person giving or recieving. Jiro does a swanton from the top outside to a table. Tachibana chokeslams Jiro from the top through that barrier thing. Eventually Jiro hits a moonsault from the top of the ladder and gets the 3-count and he pops back up fresh as a daisy to bow to the crowd.

    I don’t know what to think of this match. The opening silliness was great, I feel like there could have been some more creativity with some of the weaponry during the 2nd act of the match where they were just braining each other with foreign objects. And then the closing bit felt rushed and devoid of any gravity to the massive moves being landed. All the pieces were there for a great match, but it was lacking a lot of the little interstitial things that separate good matches from great ones. No connective tissue, but the cool spots were really cool.



     

    On 12/17/2023 at 3:06 PM, Casey said:

    @Sammo~!

    I like weird, interesting match-ups. Specifically shit from Japan.

    Some jobber named Dice Morgan and a future HOFer Scott Hall versus Shinya Hashimoto & Masa Saito. It doesn’t even start until 7 minutes in, by the way. It’s just so funny to me seeing Undertaker, about a half of a year away from being who we all know now, taking stiff kicks and punches from Hashimoto. I’ve got no clue if Hall was using the Razor’s Edge at this time in his career, maybe as a transition move, but he gives one to Hashimoto that looks like a struggle and, while it doesn’t have the smoothness as it later would, still looks pretty devastating as far as moves go. Maybe even moreso.

     

    Punisher Dice Morgan & Scott Hall vs Masa Saito & Shinya Hashimoto - March 19, 1990 - IWGP Tag Title

     

    Spoiler

    This is a 2 on 3 Handicap Match, Champions Masa Saito & Shinya Hashimoto vs Dice Morgan (who’s that guy?), Scott Hall, and Scott Hall’s mustache. Dice Morgan is the Infant Undertaker. Scott Hall is MASSIVE, Masa Saito has always been a huge, neckless wonder, but he’s also looking incredible here. We get the foreign heels national anthem spot with Hall and Taker. So good.

    It’s kind of wild seeing this version of Mark Calloway, all emotive and selling. He’s playing the big American brawler archetype here. He looks a lot smaller here. I know Scott Hall is like 6’7” and Taker is like 6’10” but Hall is so much bigger than Calloway in terms of musculature here, and Shinya Hashimoto and Masa Saito, while much shorter than the American team, are also both quite large men. Dice Morgan spends most of the match selling, again it’s pretty wild to see how mobile and vocal Taker is. He’s still figuring things out, spending most of his time figuring out how to apply the Iron Claw. Scott Hall, however, has it figured out by now. There’s a bit where he’s applying a spinning toe-hold and at the end of every rotation, he points at Masa Saito and shouts “GIVE UP!”. Pro wrestling.

    Masa Saito on offense is a ton of fun. I will never get sick of watching that dude dump people on their heads with Saito Suplexes and Backdrop Drivers. I’ve always loved his version of the figure four, where he’s kneeling in front of the opponent and flexing, just asserting his dominance. Some other highlights: Dice Morgan does the rope walk into chop that Taker would do later, but this version is much quicker and feel more like a proper misdirection spot with how fast and sloppy it looked. I liked it. He also does a really ugly, scary looking gutwrench powerbomb on Hashimoto. Hashimoto looked like he didn’t really want to go up for anything. At one point Scott Hall just yokes him up for a Razor’s Edge. Hashimoto didn’t really want any of that, but Hall didn’t care and just brute forced Hashimoto up over his head and chucked him. The home stretch of the match is just each wrestler hitting a big move, going for the pin and then having the partner come in and break it up. Eventually Masa Saito gets Dice Morgan out of the ring, allowing Hashimoto to hit the DDT and Spinning Wheel Kick for the win.

    This match was fun to watch mostly as a weird piece of history. Nothing really special and the outcome was never really in doubt but the action was solid and fun to watch. Scott Hall was already pretty established by this point but he was still 80s mustache Scott Hall, and Dice Morgan was a fun look into Taker’s past. Hashimoto is always fun to watch and it’s cool seeing later-period Masa Saito still kicking ass.

     

     

    On 1/2/2024 at 3:12 AM, The Natural said:

    Apologies for the delay. Thank you for a Bryan Danielson match I haven't seen. Here's one for you as two days time Danielson will have his first NJPW match in 20 years so to mark it:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3hCoMvRtJhc&pp=ygUZYnJ5YW4gZGFuaWVsc29uIGN1cnJ5IG1hbg%3D%3D

    I tend to give people two choices and here's the second only just recently added to YouTube:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lxHscUgchQ0&pp=ygUUYnJldCBoYXJ0IGZ1bGwgbWF0Y2g%3D

    Cheers!

    Bryan Danielson & Curry Man vs Gedo & Jado 3/12/2004 IWGP JR Heavyweight Tag Title Match
     

    Spoiler

    This is another one that I haven’t seen. I knew that Danielson and Curry Man were IWGP Jr Tag Champs but I hadn’t seen the match where they had won the belts. Right away I can tell that Gedo had a hand in this match because we immediately get some of the Gedo-isms that bother me in modern NJPW. Jado and Gedo have a third guy who pulls Danielson out of the ring and starts to beat on him. The ref tries to regain control and does end up ejecting the third man. At this point though Jado just grabs a chair and starts wailing on Bryan’s leg. The referee somehow doesn’t see this happening, I assume because he is off camera and lacks object permanence. Like, I understand that Gedo grew up watching Memphis and loves to get heat at the start of the match like this, but I’ve always thought this kind of blatant stuff in front of the ref was egregious. Though I will say it was hilarious how Bryan would swear after every chair shot and get bleeped out.

    Eventually they get back in the ring and continue to work on Bryan’s leg, including Jado applying a Stump Puller that would make Doink the Clown proud. They work over Bryan for quite a while, putting him in all kinds of holds and quickly tagging in and out. Bryan’s selling is great here. He’s clearly at a disadvantage but you can see he’s not giving up and you can also tell that he’s working it out in his head and trying to look for any advantage he can get. This Bryan Danielson guy is pretty good at a lot of the small things in wrestling. Eventually Jado over extends himself and eats a boot while running to the corner, and then a 2nd rope diving european uppercut from Danielson. Both men are down and Bryan makes it to the corner for the hot, spicy, tastes great tag to Curry Man. Curry Man runs wild for a little bit before he’s cut off by Gedo. At this point it breaks down. Gedo and Jado try to get Curry Man up for a double team powerbomb and Bryan runs in. There’s one bit where Curry Man does a moonsault onto Bryan and Gedo wrapped up in a figure four that just looked like a recipe for 4 broken legs. Gnarly. Bryan hits the Regalplex, but Gedo kicks out. There’s a blind tag by Curry Man and as Gedo starts to put Bryan into the Gedo Clutch, Curry Man comes in and hits the Angels Wings for the win.

    Good match, nothing great. I felt the first part was marred a bit by the interference and chair shots, not that those don’t have a place in pro wrestling, but the heels should at least attempt to make an effort to do it behind the ref’s back. Baby Danielson was great even back then, but he spent most of the match selling. Curry Man was booked as the big star here, getting all of the hero moments in the match. Good match, I like all 4 guys in it, but I’ve seen better individual

     

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    SECRET SANTO 2023~!

    in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

    Posted

    9 hours ago, The Natural said:

    Sammo~!: Anything you do/don't want specifically?

    Nothing in particular, I'm wide open for matches this year. 
    How about you? Anything you're looking for?

    Also I plan on catching up on writing up the 2 matches I have in my backlog later this week. Holidays are very busy for me between work and family. 

    SECRET SANTO 2023~!

    in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

    Posted

    On 12/4/2023 at 8:23 AM, Zimbra said:

    I've been watching a lot of Bock lately so here's Bockwinkel vs Ricky Morton from 1982:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3EWGglxlNQ

    This is pushing the 20 minute limit so if you want something shorter let me know.

    Houston Wrestling - Nick Bockwinkel vs Ricky Morton - 1982-07-02

    From the jump this match is great. Immediately a pair of (I assume) brothers sitting right next to the camera are heckling Bobby Heenan: "EYY WEASEL! GET OUTTA THERR!!" "Go back to the locker room Weasel! We didn't pay to see you!"  Great stuff. Bobby Heenan just needs to exist and the people hate him. Bockwinkel looks incredible, exactly like a travelling world champ should. I haven't seen a ton of pre-Rock n Roll Ricky Morton so it was cool to see his larval version. This is a 2/3 falls match with a pretty easy to follow story. The first fall is Bock is trying to figure out exactly just how lightly he can take his opponent. Bockwinkel is so good at all the small things. He's got this cocky swagger, but every time Ricky Morton gets to the ropes or escapes a collar-and-elbow tie-up Bock gets this look of incredulity on his face like "What did this little shit do?" He does a great job at conveying being slightly embarrassed, trying not to show it and failing, and then letting that emotion get the better of him, giving Ricky Morton more of an opening. It's pretty clear that Bock is better wrestler but he's arrogant and doesn't like to be shown up and that's where Ricky is able to get the advantage. They exchange holds, there's a lot of consecutive body slams, like a 2021 CM Punk match randomly broke out. Eventually we see Bock's mean streak as he's charging with shoulders in the corner. Ricky tries for a cross body, Bock gets out of the way and capitilizes with a piledriver. Bock takes the first fall. Bobby Heenan is in the ring for the rest period and a huge "Weasel" chant breaks out. 

    2nd fall has more great character work from Bockwinkel. Now that he's up a fall he's a total cocky prick. Kind of the same start to the fall, with Bockwinkel trying to grab a hold on Ricky Morton and Morton escaping him at every turn, but the emotional intensity is turned up a bit as Bock is trying to press the advantage and Ricky is more desperately fighting from underneath.  This fall more quickly devolves into a brawl as Bock is trying to put things away quickly. His cockyness gets the better of him and he gets caught with a sunset flip tying it up at one fall a piece. 

    Fall 3 starts off with Ricky on the attack, he's not letting his momentum go to waste. The crowd is starting to believe that maybe they're going to see a title change happen. A lot more bodyslams (holy cow that ring looks like it has zero give). Big knee drop off the top and then a figure four from Ricky. One thing I've never really liked in wrestling is when the ref kicks the heels hands away from the ropes during a submission attempt. The ref does this when Bockwinkel tries to escape the figure four, but Bock wasn't doing anything illegal earlier in the match, nor had he harassed the ref in any way to warrant it. It just looked like blatant favoritism to me #BockwinkelDidNothingWrong. We get a couple of cool spots from Morton including a hurrancanrana that the crowd exploded for. Eventually we get the Vader/Sting ending where Morton goes for a big splash in the corner, Bock moves out of the way, Morton bangs his head on the post and gets rolled up for the 3. 

    It's always a treat to watch Nick Bockwinkel and Bobby Heenan in their prime. It was great seeing Ricky Morton as the local babyface coming within an inch of beating the world champ. Totally different from his work with the Rock n Roll, where he would take most of the offense and sell tremendously, this match was more even with the story being that Bockwinkel was underestimating his opponent for the majority of the match and it almost costing him in the end. Thanks for sharing this. I really enjoyed it. 

    • Like 4

    SECRET SANTO 2023~!

    in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

    Posted

    15 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

    Isn't it weird that the same ancient, fourth-generation FMW footage is floating around out there? Hasn't there been anything better released that can be put up?

    Even just finding full matches that haven't been clipped to pieces is a real challenge these days

    • Like 1

    SECRET SANTO 2023~!

    in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

    Posted · Edited by Sammo~!

    I don't have any restrictions on what I want to watch. I will gladly watch just about any genre and time period of wrestling. I'm more interested in watching matches you guys like and want to share. 

     

    @brynn9292 is there anything in particular on your wishlist?

    AEW TV - 11/29 - 12/5/2023 - Continental Breakfast

    in ALL ELITE WRESTLING

    Posted

    48 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

    It has to be said. That shit is when you have a mohawk and it's mid-growing-out and just the worst. I experimented with a lot of haircuts in my 20s but that middle gap between is just the worst. The worst possible example of this was letting my mohawk get cut into a Dave Dictor-from-MDC-circa-1983/Hare Krishna cut (bald on top and around the sides, tail in the back) and then let it grow out. I started a new job at a grocery store and a guy just laughed at me and said "nice mullet". Which I didn't realize, really, that was what I actually had growing on my scalp. It's like, dude, do something! You work around plenty of people who know hairdressers or ARE hairdressers. You can't be that much of a POS behind the scenes for them to say nothing, right? 

    Joke's on him. Mullets are cool again

    Stuff. Not good. Not bad. Just...stuff.

    in LAND OF CONFUSION

    Posted

    On 11/9/2023 at 5:53 AM, The Natural said:

    One of the worst depression spells this year. Like to see my doctor every four weeks but this time it's five. Had to see two different doctors last week and today till then. I was crying on the way down there and in the waiting room but nobody checked in on me. Feeling worthless and having urges to hurt myself/suicidal thoughts suck. It's so taxing mentally and physically. Irrational thoughts I'm a burden. I shouldn't be feeling like this when I've got the family and friends I do while mourning big time the ones I've lost. I've had tech issues when it comes to Facebook which hasn't helped my frame of mind either. Keep feeling sick as well. It's my Mum's Birthday and Christmas next month which is always a trigger point. Just had a big cry to try and get it out of my system.

    Hang in there friend. I'm rooting for you. 

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    WrestleDream - 10/1/2023

    in ALL ELITE WRESTLING

    Posted · Edited by Sammo~!

    Just got back from the show. My seats were right by the entrance ramp, near the tunnel where the losers exited. Got to see lots of the set up, like the stretcher getting brought out before Darby took that gnarly stairs bump.

    Match of the night for me was Swerve/Hangman. That was a really cool atmosphere live. Crowd was 100% behind Swerve. Lots of "fuck you Cowboy" chants.

    Dragon/ZSJ was a close second. That was the match I was the most excited for and it totally delivered.

    Julia Hart/Stat also ruled. Loved the double tombstone. Couldn't tell from where I was sitting but it looked like Julia botched the springboard off of Stat's back into the Sexton?

    MJF made the Righteous look like jokes.

    Jerigolden Lovers vs Don Callis Family was fun for what it was, loved the abdominal stretch chain and Sammy is a great smarmy prick. Ibushi was barely in it though.

    Yuta/Starks was a piss break match and the crowd was really tired for FTR and Aussie open but they perked back up for the main

    Main event was fun. Saw the Nick Wayne turn coming a mile away after Darby forgave AR Fox for wearing Nick Wayne's blood and smashing a picture of his dad. Not sure how Edge on AEW is gonna turn out, but that Alter Bridge song is real good and that pop was LOUD.

    Great show, gonna have to watch the broadcast back tomorrow.

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