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sevendaughters

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Everything posted by sevendaughters

  1. lol someone comes out to Fuel? that was an entrance theme in my old backyard fed.
  2. yeah Cock Roach & Blue Bottle vs. Dragon George & Sweetgorilla was fun. Not quite as great as when Tanahashi went heel in DDT against Harashima & Ken Ohka but the same kind of slightly postmodern and fun audience stuff.
  3. the atmosphere for UWF shows at Hakata Star Lanes is just off the charts, when Nakano is making his fire comeback against Masakatsu Funaki is one of the most genuinely engaged and electric audiences I've ever heard, and credit to them they are cool when he loses too. seemed like it would have been a tough room to get stuck near the back of though in a capacity crowd.
  4. I love Shibata and think guys should carry on as long as they want. I also think New Japan is missing someone like him who can just bring the fucking HATE. But I don't want Shibata to die in a ring, or to even risk it.
  5. news just in: Low Ki vs. Court Bauer best of 21 series just announced
  6. in some respects Zero1 is the ideal promotion. generally focused on decent matches, some character stuff, heavyweights work as heavyweights, they stiff workers on money, and there's a bit of variety around their shows (admittedly not as much as when they started).
  7. for those with access to the DAVE Network, the Pacific Rim podcast with ex-Pancrase dojo traineer Paul Lazenby is a good listen.
  8. another strong point for both Maeda and Muto in the JGOAT running
  9. has anyone managed to work super matches with everyone or at least everyone on their approximate level? Genuine question. I actually quite like, for some reason, that some guys just don't work out despite their apparent talent.
  10. there's a match from last year where he grapples Shinya Aoki to a time-limit draw that is honestly decent
  11. solid hand, still young at 26. his tag team with Kazuki Hashimoto (no relation) is good.
  12. I was getting Kobashi's GHC run tapes within a few months of them being aired (not his physical prime but an artistic one) and he's up there in my top 3/4 workers. But mostly not really, apart from Tanahashi.
  13. I have seen some decent Cody matches, I am not writing him off. He doesn't fit in New Japan too well but that's fine, not everyone should belong everywhere if there's a healthy and diverse scene.
  14. on a rewatch Cody-Juice for me was a straight up DUD
  15. such a brilliant match isn't it? full of tiny details and little brilliances. the little fist bump to TAKA telling him to go away, I got this one. the stuff with the taping. THAT dragon screw. Suzuki's amazing armbar transition. a great heel performance begetting a great babyface performance. great finish too. might watch this again later.
  16. the WK13 DAVEs are in rates the Gauntlet as 4 separate matches: - Nagata/Cobb/Finlay v Bullet Club *3/4 - Nagata/Cobb/Finlay v Best Friends/Goto *** - Nagata/Cobb/Finlay v Suzuki-gun *1/2 - Suzuki-gun v Yano/Taguchi/Makabe *** Ospreay v Ibushi ****3/4 LIJ v R3K v Suzuki-gun ***1/4 Ishii v ZSJr ****1/4 BOCOGz v Yung Bux v LIJ **** Cody v Juice *** KUSHIDA v Ishmori ***1/2 White v Short Shorts ****1/2 Naito v Y2DAD ****3/4 Ace of Life v Ken *****1/2 ("Hopefully I can run this down next week. Live I went *****½, and most of the feedback was in that range (mostly *****1/4 to ******) but I need to be able to watch it without interruption to give a fair rating. In the building this was maybe the best live match I ever saw.")
  17. I know you didn't ask for recommendations but Dominion from last year and the various great G1 matches talked about on here are well worth your time.
  18. Good post Beech. I've spoken on this before but (imho) because wrestling occupies this non-academic, 'low culture' spot, where it is sociologised (what kinds of people like wrestling?) and pathologised (why do these people like wrestling?) rather than examined for the same kind of textual merits as literature then, by dint of its ostracisation, it creates and cultivates a fanbase whose mindset is to not see the artfulness. Just look at the people in the AEW/WWE conversation on Twitter using the term 'major leagues'. There is literally no consideration that, in artistic terms, All In and Wrestlekingdom 13 were unqualified successes in excess of anything WWE has managed in 2018. WWE is major, everything is else isn't. By turns the academy has largely owned the literature question - sales figures rarely factor in analysing quality. In film and music, the real public arts, the responses are usually a mediation of fan and critic in the winds of time. Historical importance is a slightly more sensitive judgement that takes into account other phenomenon but really it is a fairly empirical analysis of what was in the past that is still in the present. It casts a strange shadow. Like, it doesn't matter how much enjoyed that amateur-filmed Futen Bati-Bati show, it wasn't important, it was of no significance. In this history and business-first sense it is also where the overbearing presence of Dave Meltzer is more crushing than his star system - because the public face of wrestling's own commentariat is primarily a historian and analyser of industry and business. That isn't Dave's fault, I love Dave and he is a hero of mine. But those that have tried to fill in a new space online or in print haven't quite managed to make the impact; Fin Martin in Powerslam was good at artistic criticism for a while before turning into a crank and then the magazine went under. John Pollock at LAW was a fun and open-minded critic of wrestling whose opinions I enjoyed. And the LAW went under. It really doesn't help that many wrestling fans, especially those in the public conversation, are easily-angered online men. I speak as a former one (easily-angered, I am still an online man), before you wield your pitchforks. It is hard for a lot of people to talk emotionally and openly about this thing that at its absolute best provokes profound emotions (like after WK11 I was just on this wild high) that move us deeply, but especially so the fanbase of this thing. I am proper rambling here, sorry, late afternoon coffee. I still think Maeda is the best.
  19. I'm trying to think of other workers who have adapted so ably as Tsuruta. It's a great point. I think you could argue a case for any of the guys who worked traditional matches and then went to shoot-style covered a lot of ground between them. Maeda was working dorky World of Sport matches and finishes doing faux-MMA with Karelin with a bunch of stops between. He wasn't the best at any of them, but he was credible at most. Nobuhiko Takada too, who managed to get himself over with the aura of legitness even though he was, err, not. Even Minoru Suzuki, who is probably just outside the parameters of this conversation, scores super high on this. Arguably the highest, given his ability to seriously grapple, work NJPW main event style, do a walk and brawl, and various points between. Tenryu deserves recognition as a late convert to pro wrestling who still spans generations.
  20. I leaned more heavily on culture and influence than in-ring. If I recalibrated for work then Tsuruta goes higher up for sure. Probably the most underrated Japanese worker I'd say. Given how much of the wider conversation around great work in Japan seems to start directly after all the guys he influenced.
  21. if I had to go top ten (I don't but I am) 01. Akira Maeda 02. Antonio Inoki 03. Rikidozan 04. Mitsuharu Misawa 05. Giant Baba 06. Genichiro Tenryu 07. Riki Choshu 08. Keiji Muto 09. Shinya Hashimoto 10. Nobuhiko Takada I don't have a recency bias but it's hard to put the greats of post-2000 in just yet.
  22. Shingo worked OWE...tenuous I know.
  23. are you doing this in the voice of your avatar?
  24. Workrate comparison will always skew toward the modern worker (particularly 90s onward), and historical and statistical analysis gets you the older guys. That makes it less of a conversation, and I'm outlining what the general area of existing thought is so we might navigate this into a conversation rather than clumsily declaring Rikidozan better than Tanahashi because of culture; it takes bigger circumstantial events than the existence of Hiroshi Tanahashi for wrestling to be that popular again. Japan needed heroes and self-confidence after a destructive war. Rikidozan and his acolytes, beating up foreigners, were that. Japan is different now, arguably more sophisticated in many respects, and the storytelling capacity of wrestling has changed because of media and technology. Bill James wouldn't be able to nail this one down.
  25. Hard hard question. I am an avid cricket fan. In cricket there's an ongoing debate about who the best batsman ever is. Is it Don Bradman, who has the highest average by a clear distance whilst playing on uncovered pitches in the pre-war era, or is it a modern player such as Brian Lara or Sachin Tendulkar, who would have faced a wider range of super-athlete opponents and excelled at the top for longer. There are other variables, of course. Eventually my friend decided this: it's hard or difficult or even just unfair to compare people who existed 20 years apart from each other. I think this works for wrestling, even though some people linger at the top for longer because of the nature of the sport. Like, how do you begin to compare Hiroshi Tanahashi and Rikidozan? It seems like they exist in two different worlds. This isn't me criticising the question, by the way, just explaining how I get to my answer/s. Meltzer always posits that the hierarchy of Japanese wrestling goes something like Rikidozan as most popular, Baba and Inoki next, and then a raft of third tier guys like Tenryu, Choshu, Muta, Misawa, Kobashi, Kawada, Hashimoto, and Maeda. Maybe a couple of others. I'm not trying to name them all. Then there's the alternative history that brings in Kimura, Onita, Sakuraba, Toyonobori, Sayama, and a few others. Also in terms of pure innovation or sheer overness you can't really miss: Chigusa Nagayo, Manami Toyota, Takada, Tamura, Kohsaka, Liger, and a few others. Modern greats such as Okada and Tanahashi have to be in the mix too for the ways they've not just commercially revived wrestling in Japan, but re-energised it and detoxified it to a certain extent. After all is said and done I think Akira Maeda has a strong shout. A huge draw, an innovator, an intriguing character, and a great worker in his day. It's not just the way that UWF links to MMA and that whole side of history, but Maeda's breaking away inspired others to do the same, which leads to the great boom period for a lot of promotions in the 90s. Maeda is obviously an acolyte of Inoki and influenced him in many ways, which is why I'd call Inoki the GOAT of the Showa period. Since 2000, for me, it is Hiroshi Tanahashi.
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