Matt D

Quick, everyone wear Orange while Taz is out.

I have some strong feelings about Takada relative to Dave never shutting up about him in 86. I don't think he's a top guy in the company at all even if he's generally fine. I also find Koshinaka frustrating but I did like that one. Takada vs Koshinaka is probably my least favorite pairing in 1986-7 and we have that match a lot. Anyway, trying to keep pushing forward here. Catching up on a few cycles on the treadmill. 1/25/88: Takada vs Yamazaki: This is a match that really crystalized that view actually. Because Yamazaki seems more organic and natural and passionate and driven than Takada here. Granted, he was winning, which was a big surprise. I think this was set up so that whoever won it might go to the finals of the Juniors thing, but I'm not 100% sure. Both guys still had UWF on their kickpads so Dave was wrong about that. Yamazaki just wore the struggle on his face better. There was something not necessarily stoic but more..sleepwalking about how Takada worked sometimes and I'm not surprised Dave missed it because he was far more focused on what was done than what was behind it. This felt like a big upset overall and had the usual exciting finishing stretch but it was just striking to see these two next to each other. 1/25/88: Vader vs Hoshino/Takano: You kind of feel for Takano. There was a sense he might have gotten a push after he lost the Cobra match but he just didn't have the charisma (as of yet at least) and ended up more the guy who could lose in tags. This went over ten minutes which was probably a little much. Vader absolutely had the Vader Attack down at this point but some other things were still developing. It was tag rules and he dominated of course. Eventually they were able to double team him to the fans' delight but He press slammed Hoshino (who was quite good in bumping around and making faces of getting demolished in this one overall) to the floor, taking him out of the match completely and then he squashed Takano. I do think he's getting over week by week even if the start was shaky. 2/1/88: Choshu vs Bob Orton: Shocking moment here as Orton hits an inverted atomic drop and they call it a Manhattan Drop. For some reason I thought that like the Kitchen Sink was an invention of 00s video games. Orton got a lot of this. He was very protected on this tour and I have no idea why. If he was going to be in the stable with Vader, that'd be one thing. Some of this was good though, as Orton's stuff tended to be imaginative but not contrived, little twists on normal moves to create damage in the moment. Choshu fired back at times but would get cut off. Eventually Orton tried to pile drive him on a chair but Choshu reversed it. He hit the lariat but then started on Orton with the chair and got DQed. So protected again. 2/1/88: Inoki/Sakaguchi vs Vader/Saito: This was set up a bit by Sakaguchi saving Hoshino and Takano post the Vader 2 on one, so they're trying really. We've seen Vader vs Inoki a little too much at this point maybe. They did have a nice exchange where Inoki went for the pumphandle, Vader got out and press slammed him, and then Inoki got his knees up on a splash. There was a little bit of a sense of clash of the titans with Sakaguchi and Vader. Sakaguchi did his usual fighting in and out of the corner bits. Vader was probably a bit too giving when it came to knocking him down but no one could keep him down too. We haven't seen a ton of Sakaguchi vs Saito in this run but they do match up well. AT one point Inoki and Sakaguchi put double arm submissions on Vadera t the same time before Saito broke it up. But then Vader was right back up and dominating. This got thrown out when people went over the rail. Just keeping things simmering overall but Sakaguchi was a good addition and amazingly after the 87 matches, there was still some meat on the bone with Inoki vs Saito; just a real testament to both of them. 2/1/88: Hase vs Koshinaka: A fresh enough match still, and this had implications on the finals of the proto J cup thing. Shiro would have flashes of humanity, especially when he acts like a jerk but they were too few and far between. Thjis did have some of the same that we'd seen, the sort of spots you'd expect from a jrs match (Koshinaka hits a belly to back out of nowhere, but Hase is able to side step him rope running and hit a plancha, then bodyslam him on the floor; ah! But Koshianka comes back a minute or two later with a tombstone and locks in a headscissors) and it's fine but there's not a real throughline or interesting attitude or contrast. It's just some of the details are differnet because of Hase's style. Finish was ok. Koshianka came back with the butt butts and at a tapitia on, but Hase got a backslide out of nowhere and reversed a belly to back with a body press and hit the Northern Lights. Sometimes you watch the jrs and just list off moves, which is why Dave loved them of course because that's his way of reviewing wrestling. you can't blame Hase much as he's still so early into his career. I have another Takada vs Koshinaka match ahead of me next. Ah well.

Basically every improvement we've made to the house in the last five-six years has been with waterproofing in mind. Maybe it won't matter, but we've fixed the side door and put a sump in on that side of the house, have resloped the back yard including taking out a tree and putting in this fairly ugly plastic strip across the end of the yard at the bottom of a hill from the people behind us to redirect the water around the house, have gotten new front and back doors and had the wood underneath them replaced. These are the things we've chosen to done instead of redoing a kitchen or whatever.

He’s Michael Hayes of the HOB.

BEEF responded back to when I tweeted it out that he really appreciated the comments so that was nice. Got nothing but well wishes for the guy. I think he can break out if given the chance.

My big feeling on Jarrett is that he was fine, middle of the road, in his prime relative to his peers. But his peers are gone and he has a number of skills that very few people currently wrestling tap into in the same way so it makes him stand out in modern times. Dustin is the same way (but Dustin was generally much better than Jarrett so it's even more so).

Here's my stuff for the week (LFI vs BEEF/Drake/Butcher and Athena vs Abadon). http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2024/11/aew-five-fingers-of-death-1028-113.html I also have a quick Kyle Fletcher essay in there at the end.

One good thing. One hundred bad things?

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about the rafters stuff but I do know I'd feel worse if I they hadn't gotten Martha Hart's permission (and they have).

That’s not too different than what I said about the match itself. On their overall case, there are both pros and cons to their influence case in the way that they used irony and postmodernism in order to get over when they couldn’t get over any other way. It certainly opened certain doors for certain wrestlers to succeed in certain ways that would’ve been impossible 10 years earlier. Personally, I think the cost is way too high. They busted down doors and glass ceilings that just happened to be load-bearing.

We passed multiple (2-3 at least) sets of teenagers singing it or playing it while trick or treating last night.

Do we know if JBL is still under WWE contract? I half wonder if he’s not secretly scouting for them.

Only if Rick Knox is the ref. Half the tags in the company follow the rules half the time and it ends up annoying and discordant. Consistently is important. I’d make a bigger deal about how Knox refs and his preferences in kayfabe. Like a judge who always rules a certain way.

Beats me. I liked this. I liked Revolution. I haven’t liked much else they did this year that I saw. I think they have plenty of negative influence over the years. I’m happy to give them credit when they really make it work but by the very nature of how they’re making it work, I don’t actually feel like it can work as a weekly act. Good on them for nailing this. It took great skill and understanding. That’s as far as I’m personally going.

Bucks vs Private Party was good for what it was. It took the foundational parts and reconstructed them. The shine ended with the bell shot. They did a sort of double heat with Kassidy recovering only for them to take Quen out. Heat and hope spots even without conventional “tags”. Never took the eye off the ball. All the cool stuff served the overall purpose. Means to an end. If anything it needed a slightly more complex finishing stretch given all that Kassidy survived. Overall good though. Wouldn’t want it every week and they should have just billed it as a tornado tag but it worked here.