SUMMER SECRET SANTO 2023~!

[Curt McGirt]

Must've been. I can't remember them having a cage match... ever. Hey, if you find it, PM me.

[Zimbra]

You can buy an ISO of the show from Quebrada but that just feels like a complicated way to get your identity stolen. Even IVP doesn't have it.

[Curt McGirt]

No chance of getting it from Ditch either, he nuked his NJ site it appears, probably because of their IP crackdown. 

[John E. Dynamite]

On 7/31/2023 at 3:45 PM, Chaos said:

John E too broke to tag

Shinya Hashimoto & Takashi Iizuka vs. Naoya Ogawa & Kazunari Murakami

So much context- I'll try (+ fail) to condense this - the reason that Shinya Hashimoto was the top dog  had a lot to do with his sense of legitimacy. Unlike the more sports-entertainment leaning Chono and Mutoh, Hashimoto was a husky, stiff kicker who thrived in Different Style Fights. ]Inoki's specialty, worked matches with legitimate martial artists that didn't look like everyday pro wrestling. When Hashimoto had enough of these under his belt he became a long-term champion and had regular matches with regular guys, gritty and stiff though they were, but times started changing in the late 90's. WCW's decline and the emergence of Mixed Martial Arts as a HUGE cultural force led to what is now known as "Inoki-ism", when NJPW started treating their proper roster like shit, forced them into MMA fights where they got melted by people who trained for real fights, or booked depressingly un-theatrical psuedoviolence masquerading as reality (i.e. 5 minute title matches because that's what MMA looks like!). This era was ushered in by Hashimoto's feud with Naoya Ogawa, a God's-honest Olympic Silver Medalist in Heavyweight Judo and the man Inoki forsook all his babies for. There's five singles matches between Ogawa and Hashimoto, three Ogawa wins, one Hashimoto win, and one No Contest. Hashimoto (and New Japan) left the feud looking like a big brown bag of bitch. It directly led to Hashimoto leaving the company, ZERO-ONE becoming it's own thing as opposed to it's originally intended offshoot status, and signaled not only a huge exodus of top talent but the beginning of NJPW's darkest years.

Here's the other thing about the Hashimoto/Ogawa feud - the work is fucking awesome. The crowds are nutters. The stakes feel impossibly high. They don't look or feel anything like standard-issue pro-wrestling, they're weird and dangerous and hypnotic. Iizuka as a tag partner is spot-on - he the perfect pro-wrestler's pro-wrestler, a dedicated upperish midcarder with a surplus of skill and few intangibles. He doesn't yearn for the smoke of shooters but he accepts his responsibility. Kazunari Murakami is one of the least pro-wrestling pro-wrestlers ever, his desires have nothing to do with pinfalls and rope breaks, just broken orbital bones and expressing violent, unsubtle yakuza energy. They are theee ideal accompaniments to Hashimoto and Ogawa's idiot struggle, and their presence grounds the ignorance of the feud into something more resembling a pro-wrestling match while losing none of the volatility. I love these matches in part because you will learn more about Hashimoto thought the crowd's reaction to him than you will by watching hours of his peak stuff.

This match exists with incorrectly-synced audio on archive.org, but I am PM'ing you a link to the match in full, with a great video package and pre-match Inoki hoopla. This file is hosted on what is unequivocally a porn site. If and when I find a watchable version of this match on ANY OTHER SITE, I will link it here.

Edited August 23, 2023 by John E. Dynamite

[The Natural]

On 8/19/2023 at 4:36 PM, The Natural said:

SirSmUgly: Anything in particular you are after or avoidance? Don't want to give you the latter. Thanks, fella.

 

On 8/20/2023 at 12:33 AM, SirSmUgly said:

I am into whatever. Give me something you liked, that's all I ask, and don't worry about whether or not I'll like it. Unless that thing includes shards of glass or beds of nails, I guess.

For you, as I go back into my WCW watch, is a match between Lex Luger and the Giant from Starrcade '96that I think was the best Luger match in his second WCW run and maybe top three or four in his combined WCW runs overall. 

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ujxw8

Hi, SirSmUgly.

Thank you for my match. Will watch ASAP. 

I have two, feel free to pick which.

The first is The New Daniel Bryan vs. AJ Styles from WWE TLC 2018. I gave this ***** and rate it as the best Bryan/Styles match. Ironic at WWE Royal Rumble 2019 a month later, they had their worst match ever:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ongHaRLw37k&pp=ygUZZGFuaWVsIGJyeWFuIHZzIGFqIHN0eWxlcw%3D%3D

The second is Psicosis vs. Rey Misterio Jr from ECW, 17th October 1995. A ***** match. I've always rated it ahead of the more famous one from WCW Bash at the Beach 1996:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i15XPMvv3hM&pp=ygUYcmV5IG15c3RlcmlvIHZzIHBzaWNvc2lz

Paul xxx.

[Matt D]

On 8/21/2023 at 6:55 PM, porksweats said:

I love some Brad Armstrong so this will be a joy to watch I can imagine!

For you, you are one tough person to choose for so I'll give you one based off your AEW Roster A-Z! 

You liked Shane Taylor and you seemed like you wanted to give Taven a fair shake. Hopefully this helps both cases!

I had seen a Shane Taylor match recently, vs Cody, and there was some sort of Business Bear and it was all very strange because I wasn't paying attention to that period well. This, however, was quite straightforward and interesting. It's from December of last year and a Texoma promotion. It was pretty sparsely attended but it seemed to mean something to both wrestlers, with Taylor saying as much after the match. They wrestled it for themselves to a degree though also it had a real house show vibe given the sparseness even though it was a "dream match" and a "first time ever" match and for Taylor's title. Taven was babyface which meant hand slapping on the way in and fighting from underneath in chinlocks but he's also super unlikable (which isn't a bad thing in a heel, but...). I think he can't help but be himself in this regard. They had some solid chain wrestling early including a fun spot where Taven went for an armdrag and got jammed, which is always a nice visual, also a nice rolling dodge by Taylor. Taylor didn't quite make it over on a leapfrog. I assume this wasn't planned but they played with it a bit after the fact. I'm not sure if that drove the chinlocks or if it was just the setting but I don't mind too much as the fans did want to clap up for Taven. I'm not a caution guy but Taylor maybe shouldn't do that missed legdrop spot at his size. We've seen how Hogan ended up, right? Finishing stretch was good with a nice nearfall out of Taven's Dirty Deeds (which is either the climax or the just the tip; very Danny Doring and hard to take seriously, especially as a de facto babyface). I don't thinks ever really got to the next gear that these two probably have in them and I'm not sold on babyface Taven (I would have rather seen Taylor as local de facto face and Taven as blowhard showoff for instance), but for a House Show style match, it was fun. Glad I saw it. Thanks.

[Zimbra]

14 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

No chance of getting it from Ditch either, he nuked his NJ site it appears, probably because of their IP crackdown. 

FYI, Somebody reuploaded a bunch of the stuff from his sites

[Curt McGirt]

Oh man that is too good! Not only do you get all the stuff including the New Japan, you can watch it without downloading so it's like your own private Puro Youtube.

The second of the Sasaki/Nagata bloodbaths is on there, clipped to seven minutes from almost 12, but it's a marathon just watching those guys plow into each other while leaking that much sangre. It's like some joker in the locker room (I'm thinking Suzuki) came up and said "Hey Kensuke, your wife is here tonight, you gonna let her bleed for you? I saw that match with Kandori, I know who wears the pants in your house." And so he and Yuji go out there and end up looking like they were in a car crash. 

If you're digging around in that NJ section I would also recommend watching all the Shibata vs. X matches because it looks like he has most of those "proving ground" series of matches where he'd face up with a big name and just get dusted for being such a young punk. 

[Zimbra]

I'm just happy there's some T2P on there, which seems to have mostly disappeared from the internet.

I lost a bunch of time last night to really sleazy indies on the internet archive.  Unfortunately the VQ of the Kurisu/Super Uchu Power chain match I saw is too bad for me to make somebody watch it for Secret Santo.

[Curt McGirt]

I'd watch it, long as there's a balance with a second match for the week as well. (Speaking of which, still gonna get to Devil/Chiggy, Mr. Octopus)

I dig how he has that swath of FUTEN on there because that is NOWHERE unless you got a DVR of it sitting at your home right now, and as far as I know only one of us on here is named Phil Schneider.

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Curt McGirt

[John E. Dynamite]

There's 10 full FUTEN shows hosted by PuroArchive on archive.org . They got everything. But they ain't got Chono/Takayama in a cage. Neither does Classics Revival, or the previously mentioned dodgy porn site (that has a ton of other '03 NJPW stuff I can't find elsewhere). Even searched in Japanese characters on bilibili. If it's out there it's way deep in the weeds.

[Zimbra]

Fuck it, we've built it up so much I'm gonna try to buy the show from Quebrada.  He's also got a couple Futen shows that don't seem to be up elsewhere.

If I get it I'll throw it on youtube.

[Curt McGirt]

You'd do better to put it on Dailymotion, NJ'll get it tossed.

Edited August 23, 2023 by Curt McGirt

[The Natural]

On 8/20/2023 at 12:33 AM, SirSmUgly said:

I am into whatever. Give me something you liked, that's all I ask, and don't worry about whether or not I'll like it. Unless that thing includes shards of glass or beds of nails, I guess.

For you, as I go back into my WCW watch, is a match between Lex Luger and the Giant from Starrcade '96that I think was the best Luger match in his second WCW run and maybe top three or four in his combined WCW runs overall. 

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ujxw8

Lex Luger vs. The Giant. WCW Starrcade 1996.

Didn't expect a collar and elbow lock up to start the match which ends in a stalemate till the running clothesline by The Giant knocks Lex Luger down. We get some impressive strength spots by Luger in retaliation. I forgot about the old n.W.o interference tropes which WCW PPVs aren't immune from. Here we get Crow Sting which I'll always be a mark for. This is there months into the character change as a result of what happened inside WarGames, Team WCW vs. Team n.W.o WarGames at WCW Fall Brawl 1996. Sting whispers in Giant's and Luger's ear, "Hail Hydra" I reckon. Sting leaves his baseball bat and Luger beats Giant to using it for the pinfall victory. Good match reminding me how over Lex Luger was at the time and how lean The Giant was as well. Thank you for gifting this, it was worth persevering with as Dailymotion was acting a total twat.

Paul xxx.

Edited August 24, 2023 by The Natural

[John E. Dynamite]

On 8/14/2023 at 6:34 PM, Curt McGirt said:

 

This is the one Matt just dug up. I've yet to watch either but they're both supposed to be A+ quality. 

EDIT: And of course, you want sumpin else just give me a direction and I gotcha

in which i gotta write about thirty minutes of 1990 All Japan, oy. What's a boy to do

I'm never sure about announced attendances for house shows, but geez, the streamers and the crowd reactions lead you to believe this is happening in front of thousands, rapt, brushed up on it, here for it (edit: yeah this looks like sold out Korakuen). It's pound-for-pound the biggest post-Tenryu all-natives lineup and everybody's real grateful about that. They think Fuchi's a star and I'll agree. There's two kinds of Trios Matches con Fuji, ones where he's got a fall guy to crack open like a bushel of crabs, and matches where Kobashi has to fill (and rise above) the role. So we get that established early, but it's early enough in the longer game of the 1990's that Fuchi never comes across as the obvious fall guy, which is good because he isn't and the crowd isn't treating him like one.

So this is an Akira Taue match. And it's better for it, no question. The best parts of this match are seeing how everybody matches up -I won't go as far to say that all classic King's Road tag matches are just amalgamations of the singles pairings therein, but you know what I mean. Taue vs. Misawa is the most underrated matchup of the (...math...) six Four Corners matchups. Probably my second favorite behind the obvious. And that's the best part of this one for me. Perhaps it isn't the exact same stuff they were working in their brilliant 1995 series of singles n tags, but I couldn't tell you one thing they're doing differently. I love it.

The Misawa vs. Jumbo segments certainly have their gravitas, but they exist in their own world. Maybe because they're their own feud at this point, maybe because the crowd realizes neither is eating the fall. It's still top-shelf. I forgot how great Jumbo's bodyslams are. It reminds me of every great French restaurant I've been lucky enough to eat at where the best thing on the menu is the bread. The long-ish heat from Jumbo + Fuchi on Kobashi is (good) filler and rank-establishing. Or role-establishing. But it is filler, it never drags but there's a sense that they're padding this one out just a little bit knowing there's no TV show gonna clip their Indian Deathlocks. Still, it does what you want it to do. They REALLY work Kobashi's knee knowing that the sympathy will flow as freely as anything. The initial chants when the bell rang had the crowd audibly preferring Fuchi to Kobashi. Ten minutes later when Kobashi is in a Fuchi half-crab, it's a different story. Like it's supposed to be. And dear God do I love the very, very, VERY particular sound of All Japan crowds booing top-card natives. It's such a different cadence. It's so different than the tone they use to boo gaijin, monsters, outsiders, undercard shitheads. It's so incredulous, so much more a personal affront. It's the "Taue drops Misawa's throat over the top rope" sound, but all three on the de-facto heel side get it easy on this one.

It's crazy to me how quickly they all figured out their personal formula once the core came together. Maybe not Kobashi, who's still a high flyer here hitting gnarly topes (edit: holy fuck that was actually a Taue tope) and getting rocket launched to the outside, but everybody else is entirely themselves. Misawa's superman elbow as the solution to every problem is fully-formed and used to great effect. Taue and Kawada are so violent with each other they can barely stand it. It's a whirlwind of kicks and sumo harite and scream and struggle that OF COURSE they eventually fall in love. It doesn't feel like they even spend a lot of time in the ring together as the legal men. They go as hard as they can and realize that the FEELINGS they are FEELING are TOO STRONG. Too fukken TRUTHFUL.

God damnit, 90's AJPW is just French cooking. It's cheating. It's duck breast and butter and mise en place and butter and shallots and snails and salt and butter and don't even get me started about how they tortured and murdered a goose and how much we hate ourselves for loving it (not that Misawa bumps that hard here). You know exactly what the fuck it is. Your understanding of pro wrestling is built on it. It's like writing about a bootleg of a Ramones gig post-Rocket to Russia. Maybe nobody's ever heard this particular show, but we know the songs and we've got a copy of It's Alive and every great critic has written tome after tome about why the vibe, why the _performers_ in themselves are a pantheon among pantheons, the DEANs and the Christgaus and the Meltzers and the Lester Bangs and they're right and you've known they're right and have been basing your understanding of the artform around these other people already being correct in their reverence to it since your mom was getting you a box of that four-step acne treatment that didn't do shit for anybody. You have to find the little bits hiding in there to praise if you want to have anything interesting to say. Fuchi stooges a little harder and goofier near the end than if it was taped. The double-team moves that stand out belong to Taue/Jumbo and Misawa/Kobashi. Taue over Kobashi HAS to be the finish, and it is, and that's great. Not the early version of the Backdrop/Neckbreaker Drop combo, just Taue by himself finishing the job. This match is like ordering the best thing on the menu and expecting to be bored by it and then going UH. DUDE. THERE'S A REASON THIS COSTS MORE MONEY. Except it's entirely free.

Akira Taue is Steak Au Poivre. Rough around the edges... that's the entire gourmet-ass point.

Edited August 25, 2023 by John E. Dynamite

[Zimbra]

On 8/12/2023 at 8:48 AM, SirSmUgly said:

So here's a match that I didn't remember, but that I enjoyed quite a lot from the final Clash: Alex Wright vs. Ultimo Dragon.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/12z12t9/ultimo_dragon_vs_alex_wright_for_the_tv_title/

Oops, I owe you some words!

Alex Wright vs Ultimo Dragon - With these two you know you are about to see some very competently executed professional wrestling and that's exactly what we get.  I sort of missed out on Wright (except for the dreadful Berlyn stuff) the first time around so I have no real opinion about him other than I always wish he would wrestle more Euro than he actually does.  Ultimo Dragon is a guy who I think the critical consensus has soured on, but I still enjoy his stuff.  He feels a bit like a victim of his own success where he trained the people that took his style further so he starts to look a bit stodgy in comparison.  But his execution is still incredibly smooth and I think he does a nice job emoting through the mask.  The crowd is way into booing Wright's dancing and posing.  Wright starts things off with a really neat hip throw and we get some fairly perfunctory arm work.  Ultimo does put on a nice wristlock.  They're playing up Wright's size and strength advantage but he still loses a shoulderblock battle to Ultimo.  Dragon's kicks look better than I remember them.  He's not a leg-slapper so he has to actually make contact with them and it looks and sounds good.  He also does some fun chops in the corner that he really puts his whole body into.  Wright counters a leapfrog into a pretty great powerbomb, but just kind of stands there instead of going for a pin, which seems to confuse even Mark Curtis.  It also sets off Bobby Heenan who gets increasingly annoyed as the match goes on at Wright's stalling.  Wright does some bad backbreakers and a good gutwrench suplex to take us to commercial.   We come back to a chinlock and Wright does a real neat Steinerline and a great stomp off the top rope that Ultimo sells like he's been shot in the neck.  He also throws some really vicious elbows in there somewhere, way better than any of his other strikes.  Wright is just kind of doing his double fist pose randomly like he's spamming taunts in a video game.  He goes up top but gets knocked to the floor.  He sidesteps an Ultimo plancha but falls victim to the Asai moonsault, which Dragon gets some nice distance on.  There's an incredibly awkward counter of a Wright superplex into a facebuster.  Wright counters a handspring elbow with an elbow to Dragon's head and after some roll ups gets a german suplex for the win and the tv title.

This was a good first-hour-of-Nitro/Saturday-Night-main-event TV match.  Maybe needed one more big Ultimo spot in there to spice things up.  Wright is very frustrating; he does some very cool stuff but can't really sustain it through the match so there's not a lot of flow.  He does a lot of playing to the crowd but doesn't seem to really be interacting with them, if that makes sense.

[Matt D]

Week 4. This is a busy week for everyone with PPVs of course, so just be patient with one another, etc. etc. Try to get the match for your partner as soon as you can though. Sorry for the lack of tagging. I think no doubles yet though.

Casey
The Natural

John E. Dynamite
SirSmUgly

Zimbra
Porksweats

Matt D
Curt McGirt

Chaos
Octopus

[Matt D]

On 8/23/2023 at 6:34 PM, Curt McGirt said:

You'd do better to put it on Dailymotion, NJ'll get it tossed.

Hey Curt, have you been keeping up with Panama stuff as we've been covering it? Here's a pretty novel chain match.

All you need to know is that Idolo is one of the true heroes of Panamanian lucha and he just turned tecnico again for the first time in a while after he had a break up with Exterminador (yellow mask):

 

Edited August 26, 2023 by Matt D

[Curt McGirt]

Awesome! Yeah, I've been keeping up with the reading and I definitely watched the La Parka match that I think you guys started out with at least. 

Funny enough I was gonna give you the Great War/la Gran Guerra from WWC (their version of WarGames) and its sequel if you haven't seen them before. So...?

[Matt D]

40 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Awesome! Yeah, I've been keeping up with the reading and I definitely watched the La Parka match that I think you guys started out with at least. 

Funny enough I was gonna give you the Great War/la Gran Guerra from WWC (their version of WarGames) and its sequel if you haven't seen them before. So...?

That’s perfect actually. I’ll take it and explain why when I review.

Edited August 26, 2023 by Matt D

[Curt McGirt]

Here's the first one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRHpI7TeMco&pp=ygURd3djIHRoZSBncmVhdCB3YXI%3D

and the sequel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoKjjCi3uxM&ab_channel=WrestlingHomeMuseum-WrestlingClassics

I gave you the Spanish language commentary of the latter because I refuse to expose anyone to the horror of Bobby fucking Jaggers on commentary. 

The main reason I'm posting both is because they're two sides of a coin story-wise, they have a mutual overlap and it's neat to do an apples-to-apples comparison. Take in mind that these might be WarGames-esque but they aren't legit WarGames rules. 

[SirSmUgly]

On 8/23/2023 at 3:37 AM, The Natural said:

 

Hi, SirSmUgly.

Thank you for my match. Will watch ASAP. 

I have two, feel free to pick which.

The first is The New Daniel Bryan vs. AJ Styles from WWE TLC 2018. I gave this ***** and rate it as the best Bryan/Styles match. Ironic at WWE Royal Rumble 2019 a month later, they had their worst match ever:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ongHaRLw37k&pp=ygUZZGFuaWVsIGJyeWFuIHZzIGFqIHN0eWxlcw%3D%3D

The second is Psicosis vs. Rey Misterio Jr from ECW, 17th October 1995. A ***** match. I've always rated it ahead of the more famous one from WCW Bash at the Beach 1996:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i15XPMvv3hM&pp=ygUYcmV5IG15c3RlcmlvIHZzIHBzaWNvc2lz

Paul xxx.

I figured that I'd just write up two matches since The Natural gave me two. Why pick one or the other?

THE NEW Daniel Bryan vs. AJ Styles (WWE Tables, Ladders, and Chairs, 16 December 2018)

• I haven't watched WWE for years now and didn't fully realize that Bryan had turned heel at any point after I stopped watching.

 

• Bryan does some Larry Z.-style stalling early on, and I loved it.

 

• Then they collar-and-elbow their way into the corner, and there are six camera cuts. Six! I counted eighteen total overall on that simple lock-up and punch-fest that went into multiple corners. Boy, I can tell that I haven't watched WWE for a long time because I thought the match production made this thing actively worse.

 

• Besides that, the commentary got in the way of what was a decent match. And do they have to insistently call him THE NEW Daniel Bryan all the time? God, this company goes out of its way to have awful presentation. I've been watching 1992 Superstars, and between Vince and Perfect having bad pun-offs to start every show and going all out to over-emote on commentary (particularly Vince), it's been pretty shitty. This is about a million times worse, though. These commentators bickering and bickering and bickering some more when there's a match going on is unnecessary.

 

• What does work about this match is Bryan deliberately differentiating this THE NEW version of himself by doing stuff that babyface Bryan would never do. Stalling, wrestling slowly and deliberately, grabbing the nostrils and pulling upward when prepping a bow and arrow. He spends the first few minutes of this thing smothering short bursts of Styles's fiery offense.

 

• Now, the other thing I'd say is that, while this match is well-worked, it probably could have been either a) edited down by ten minutes, or b) spent a full first five minutes of the full twenty-four with Bryan bailing, stalling, wandering around, etc. There's a Styles comeback around ten minutes in that feels like, yeah, we should go into the finishing run here, but the match keeps going for another twelve or thirteen minutes. It gets stuffed, and that's fine, but this elongated, counter-filled finishing run feels pretty played out. I get, from the commentary, that the spot where Styles wraps Bryan's ankle around the post is a payoff from the build-up to this match, so stuff like that is fine. But that should have been closer to the end, I think. They could have run through the leg-specific spots mostly there instead of doing leg work for half of the lat ten minutes and kind of ignoring the leg work for the other half of the last ten minutes.

 

• One final note: This crowd is not helpful at all. They are dead for that callback/payoff spot and pretty much everything else outside of getting to chant NO! while Bryan kicks Styles in the chest. 

 

• Anyway, I thought that there was a good twelve or fourteen minute match in here that was a sort of over-worked, but still solid twenty-four minute match. The production being awful and the crowd being lethargic (I laughed at their weak "This is awesome" chant toward the end - it felt so obligatory for them) didn't necessarily help give this match the big match atmosphere I think it was meant to have. 

Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Psicosis (ECW Television, 17 October 1995)

• Speaking of awful commentary, it's Joey Styles! That's probably going to be a muuuuuuuuuch less popular take than me shitting on Corey Graves or David Otunga, I know.

 

• However, I love these fellas! I've seen this match long ago, but I'm glad to see it again. I'm having a moment right now in which, upon my WCW rewatch, I'm finding myself to be a bigger fan of Psicosis than I've ever been. He is a fun TV match machine. So is Rey (who is injured again at my point in the watch), but Psicosis has been a bit of a revelation for me. I've always liked him, but yeah, I'm a big fan at this point. 

 

• This is best two-of-three, and the first fall ends quickly. They basically don't bother to pace themselves AT ALL for this first fall; both guys come out with the plan to throw bombs and get a quick 1-0 lead. This leads to three minutes of these guys diving on each other at top speed until Rey buries Psicosis with a rana at about three minutes in that nets him a quick pinfall.

 

• Poor Psicosis can't get on track. He got overrun and beaten quickly for a fall, and then when he gets back up for the second fall, he goes right back to trying to outrun Rey. Rey pretty easily rolls Psicosis, who I read as desperately wanting to show Rey up by out-high-risking him. Psicosis finally accepts that trying to run with Rey is a bad game plan; he slows things down a bit and uses his height and weight advantage to try and bully Rey. Psicosis hits a gross powerbomb, but a lackadaisical, celebratory cover only gets two. I love the work supporting a narrative that Psicosis a) wants to style on Rey and does a poor job of covering or following up sometimes because he wants to celebrate instead, and b) the animals in the crowd have him irritated and unnerved, so he occasionally stops to taunt them. 

 

• Psicosis is fine as long as he uses power moves or wraps Rey in a submission, and he smartly takes a chair to Rey's knee to try and slow him down. But what happens when he starts running again? Rey dodges a running corner attack and goes back on offense.

 

• Rey looks like he might be about to catch Psicosis with another bomb for a quick win, but Psicosis catches Rey on a springboard moonsault attempt and buries him with a Tombstone for three to even up the match. 

 

• Let me take some time to talk about the Philly crowd. These bloodthirsty scumbags, bless their hearts, are WHITE HOT for this thing. If you didn't know who either of these wrestlers were, you'd think they were a big deal just off the reaction. I can't help but compare them to the San Jose crowd, which mumbled chants in a half-asleep stupor in that previous match. 

 

• So, after a replay of the first two falls, we come back to Psicosis powerbombing Rey onto a table that doesn't break, then straight launching him into some chairs at ringside before hitting a plancha all the way from the ring over the railing. Psicosis is coming off as a real mean prick in this thing. He acts like a guy who just hates everyone, especially Rey, and who has such confidence in his ability to pull any wrestling move off that either he'll kill Rey or kill himself doing shit he shouldn't try to do to kill Rey.

 

• In what I would argue is the spot of the night, Rey makes a comeback and ends up hitting a springboard 360 seated plancha to the outside. But the actual BEST part of this spot is right after, as both hurt, tired dudes find the energy to kick one another from their prone positions on the floor. They bring the HATE. 

 

• Anyway, as I remembered, this match absolutely rules the world. Rey gets a chair and returns a few favors from earlier in the match. Rey hits a diving rana from the top rope for 2.9, then hits a headscissors and a second-rope springboard seated plancha to Psicosis on the outside. There's a sense that these guys can't possibly go on much longer at this pace and doing this type of damage to one another. 

 

• Psicosis lays Rey out on a table at ringside and drives him through it with a senton splash because why the fuck not. Back in the ring, Psicosis follows up with a powerbomb, hits a chair shot, puts the chair on Rey's chest, and hits one more senton onto the chair (and Rey) that finally keeps Rey down for three. That this match is still a classic even after "lots of pacey, high-risk bomb throwing" became a common match type is largely down to Psicosis being the biggest and cockiest asshole jock luchador in the world. 

 

• PSICOSIS FUCKIN' RULES

 

• (Rey's really good, too)

 

• I'm sort of glad I watched both matches because, whether Natural was trying to do this or not, I think they were a direct contrast of one another. One was over-produced in front of a dead-ish crowd and probably needed more editing to reach the heights it was going for. The other was simply shot in front of a blazing hot crowd and was EXACTLY the right length for the way these two worked it and the type of match it was. Interesting stuff, and I'm glad that I chose to watch both of them!

 

[Matt D]

On 8/26/2023 at 8:39 AM, Matt D said:

Week 4. This is a busy week for everyone with PPVs of course, so just be patient with one another, etc. etc. Try to get the match for your partner as soon as you can though. Sorry for the lack of tagging. I think no doubles yet though.

Casey
The Natural

John E. Dynamite
SirSmUgly

Zimbra
Porksweats

Matt D
Curt McGirt

Chaos
Octopus

• @Casey@The Natural
• @John E. Dynamite @SirSmUgly
• @Zimbra @porksweats
• @Chaos @Octopus

Hey, I got tagging to work. Just bumping this so people can see the pairings in case they missed it due to my lack of tagging ability before.

[Casey]

Oh, word. Whatcha want, Natural? I don’t really care this week to be honest. I’ve got a long weekend so I’m good. Speaking of which, I’ll get my review out for @Zimbra‘s pick out probably tonight. 

[Zimbra]

Damn, guess I'm the only one who can't tag.

Anyway, Porksweats: Before he wrestled in front of 80000 people Kota Ibushi got his head and ass kicked in opening up the very first Fu-Ten show.  So I present to you: Katsumi Usuda vs Kota Ibushi

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2bjf83