Goodear Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 So I was one of those people that wasn't really into the idea of having "The World" in on the poll this year but I will have to take that back. Doing the 'homework' to get ready for the tournament has been pretty fun since I've had time to actually search people out and see what they were about. Here are some initial impressions. Kana - Wow. Okay. Kana is either the worker that CM Punk wishes he could be or the worker I wish CM Punk would be based on his character. Tomatoes, tomahtoes and all of that. But I look at her work this psuedo shoot fight style and it should be what punk is doing in my opinion. Anyway she is seriously making me think about voting against Seth Rollins and I wouldn't have thought that possible. I think weakness wise, she does better in 10 minutes than in a longer 20 minute contest because its harder to keep up that level of intensity but she's still pretty enjoyable. Dean Allmark & Robbie Dynamite - First impressions sort of cooked Dean in my mind because the first match I chose to watch (against Spitfire) because it was this technically sound but very, very British affair with no heat. Like it was a fine exhibition of working wristlocks and British counters but not much else. Thankfully, I double dipped him to get a watch on Dynamite and boy did it make a difference. Dean is much better as a local hero Jerry Lawler type and is way better at that style. Found a really good tag match with Deano teaming with Absurdly Big Mask Horns (aka El Ligero) against Robbie & Rampage Brown and it was super king-sized. Dean does do the headstand in the corner spot that Ultimo Dragon taught me to hate but all in all, he's lots of fun. Dynamite is totally solid and would totally work in today's WWE in like a hot second. Man does some pretty great stooging and classic heel work. Rush reminds me a lot of Kerry Von Erich for some reason and that's not a bad thing. He comes off as way more athletic than the guys doing more which makes no sense. It says something about presence that a lot of luchadores lack. His character seems like a jerk though, like I don't want to route for the guy. Virus doesn't do a lot for for me. Lots of wacky lucha submissions and that's probably his best quality but he didn't grab me even when he did the most hurty dive to the outside I saw watching lucha against Titan (which was shot beautifully from underneath). I would still put him over Titan (Zzzz), Terrible (who has a left hand and that's the only impression I have of him) or Blue Panther who looks like the world's toughest shoe salesman without his mask. Negro Casas is totally the bomb yo. He is super versatile working these slug fests with Rush or comedy against Maximo and Super Porky. Totally going to vote him over Show. Suwama and Go are dull by-the-numbers Japan guys that did not impress. Okada has tons of charisma but his selling is spotty (ow my leg hurts... picture perfect dropkick... ow ow seriously my leg ... power move done flawlessly). This may be an issue with the New Japan style because I was watching Ibushi do the same things but it was worse considering he was doing standing phoenix splashes after Minoru Suzuki tried to pull his leg off. Speaking of which, I would have though Suzuki would have been right up the board's alley as the love child of Kevin Sullivan and Buzz Sawyer but didn't make the field. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaedmc Posted March 2, 2014 Author Share Posted March 2, 2014 Posts like THAT make me want to keep doing this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cristobal Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 And what does Rollins' impending 82-14 victory make you want to do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Negro Casas is totally the bomb yo. He is super versatile working these slug fests with Rush or comedy against Maximo and Super Porky. Totally going to vote him over Show. --- Okada has tons of charisma but his selling is spotty (ow my leg hurts... picture perfect dropkick... ow ow seriously my leg ... power move done flawlessly). This may be an issue with the New Japan style because I was watching Ibushi do the same things but it was worse considering he was doing standing phoenix splashes after Minoru Suzuki tried to pull his leg off. Speaking of which, I would have though Suzuki would have been right up the board's alley as the love child of Kevin Sullivan and Buzz Sawyer but didn't make the field. Casas = awesome. I had never seen him before this morning, though of course I had heard his name for years. I put in "Negro Casas 2013" and watched the first few matches that came up. He can stretch guys, he can brawl, he can do basically everything and do it really well. He immediately became one of my favorite guys to watch, period. I have the same issues with Okada as you. People are rightly getting on Bryan for forgetting that he's hurt, but watch Okada and the dude is dropping selling to do a move and then going back to selling. I don't buy it unless your gimmick makes it somehow fit. Also, watching NJPW makes me realize that I am either biased or I prefer the pacing of WWE-style because sometimes those matches feel too go-go-go to me. Tanahashi has many of the same problems as Okada, but I find him to be much more charismatic. For some reason, he reminds me of Cena in that way, but I can't put my finger on why. I love the guy, though, somewhat irrationally. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LooseCannon Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Posts like THAT make me want to keep doing this. It's only downhill from there, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goodear Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Watching Prince Devitt vs. Ibushi from Wrestle Kingdom 8 hoping to get a better showing than the last match I saw with Prince against Tanahashi which was so full of Bullet Club interference I was having nWo flashbacks. And they are right back to that here too... It is just really annoying because you never really get a sense of flow since there are 4 or 5 guys interfering every 2 minutes. It sucks. There is a kind of an art to interfering in a match so it builds heat and just having endless cheating doesn't fit that bill. So (in Goodear's Magic Land of Make Believe) I'm going to be taking points off Devitt for not being able to plan this stuff out well. It's like building your match around limb work when you don't know a wrist lock from a wrist watch. Just a giant disappointment that his matches have been all filled with stuff he isn't good at. Rockstar Spud meanwhile doesn't seem to be good at anything which is amazing. I've got more desire to see more of the team of Jeff Bradley and Rob Terry than to see any more out of Spud. I watched some OVW stuff to get this impression so if anyone has anything else to add to the watch pile, now is the time. Unlike Smelly, I am having a weird disconnect with Tanahashi by the way in that he doesn't really connect with me on an emotional level. I get that he is very good at what he does but I don't feel drawn into his matches because he is this emotional hole. Like I want to see Minoru Suzuki get punches in the face and I want to see Okada do his thing but Tanahashi personally leaves me cold. Like a WAYYYY better Alberto Del Rio. He is really great as a baseline guy though in that I can tell right off if I'm going to like a guy based off their matches with Tanahashi. With that in mind, Tomohiro Ishii from 8/2/13 is up next and Tanahashi starts the match working... like a complete dick? Huh. He kind of reminds me of Shawn Michaels in these opening moments at his 'Show Stealer' days in terms of mannerisms and selling. This is actually turning me around on Tanahashi to be honest. Ishii whips him into a barricade and Tanahashi gives this great 'I'mma gonna get fired up' face that is so common in Japan and runs right into a powerslam. It's great for cynical fucks like me who hate those exchanges. The crowd is just eating up whatever Ishii is doing and all because of Tanahashi being such a schmuck. He does a skin the cat after a baseball slide and it is super great because it just reeks of Michaels at his pompous best. He then eats canvas on a middle rope senton because he poses. JESUS FUCK I HATE THIS! Okay okay okay. Explain to me how German Suplexes work in Japan? Seriously! Do they only hurt after you get up and hit another move? Are the wrestling version of a time bomb? Is it like Fist of The North Star? "In three steps you will feel this!" Sorry. Sorry. I HATE THIS THOUGH. The second half of the match up is more your standard New Japan stuff with forearm exchanges where they trade like 30 of them. It's just not my cup of tea. There is a great near fall off a missed frog splash with Ishii using the Magistral Cradle and really I think it would have worked better as a finish than what we got (Ishii with a Steiner Screwdriver). Ishii was okay but nothing I am going to tear up the internets to find again. This might have been my favorite Tanahashui match though as he really brought it in the first half of the contest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GOTNW Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Explain to me how German Suplexes work in Japan? Seriously! Do they only hurt after you get up and hit another move? It's not Germans themselves, selling is perceived completely differently in Japan. Actually Germans tend to finish matches a lot more often than in the US. But you'll get guys kicking out at 1 after bigger moves and guys trading multiple German Suplexes and whatnot. By itself it isn't really good or bad (except when certain workers feel the need to do it in every match they're in to get cheap pops). Sometimes it'll feel like the greatest thing ever, sometimes it falls flat and feels like two US Indy guys cosplaying wrestlers they saw on tape. So just like everything else it all comes down to how the match had been laid out prior to the sequence, its timing, whether or not it had been built up to etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaedmc Posted March 2, 2014 Author Share Posted March 2, 2014 Yeah all that really depends on layout. I've seen some matches that just go into overkill where guys are kicking out of everything. Those matches are lazy. But sometimes those spots are earned by what the guys do before and after. The recent Goto/Shibata match at the Dome show, which I think was the best match of the show, is a good recent example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scraylo187 Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Ok, Negros Casas homework is beginning. I'm watching a match between him and Titan from January. Casas legit looks like a guy that would murder you. Like, the dude from The Crow would have hired him to kill the Crow, if the 'kill the bird' plan hadn't worked. What the fuck did I just type? My favorite thing about Negro so far, besides being the Jake The Snake of lucha, is that all of his pins looks like he's trying to win. At no point does he ever look like he's doing a 'this is a kick out at 2' pin. His win here is sweet. He manages a really simple counter to a high risk move and says 'hell I'll take it' for the third fall. At 12:33 he hits this sick little arm breaker where he just locks in Titan's wrist while sitting on the top rope and lets himself fall backwards. And then he gets really pleased with himself. There's also an Aztec Soaring Eagle in the mix. I need to watch more Lucha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goodear Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 This is surely an idiotic question, but I'll go ahead and ask it: How do I watch Lucha? I mean this in the sense of, especially for trios matches, what is the basic structure(s) that I should be on the lookout for? I just don't want to watch a trios match and look at it like I'm watching a Shield/Wyatts match. On the other hand, the one-on-one matches make structural and narrative sense to me. I'm having a blast looking up some of these competitors, especially watching and re-watching NJPW. It's not my favorite style, but I do have an appreciation for Tanahashi's work this year. Okay I probably shouldn't be the person answering this because I'm no expert but this is what I have gleaned. Trios matches typically are 2-out-3 falls affairs where the fall doesn't end until either the 'captain' (who can be hard to pick out some times but are usually highlighted during the prematch graphic) or the other two guys on the team get beat. I'm not sure if they have to be beat in succession or not since I've never seen the sequence get broken up. From what I have seen, two guys get beat one right after the other or at the same exact moment all the time. Falls can happen very quickly where someone gets a double leg and quickly applies a submission but falls can also happen without one side getting any offense in at all. The heat segments can also feel overly long at times and the face rally doesn't really work anything like an American match where John Cena has a set bunch of moves while coming back on a guy. It can sometimes feel like 'Okay, its my turn to start winning' and transitions don't really strike me as a strength of the style. It can also get annoying when one face is getting pummeled by three guys and the other two stand around until they go into the ring along and also get smacked around. Submissions are extremely common as are pinning combinations. You are far less likely to see a finish where someone gets 'knocked out' with a 450 splash or something along those lines but it does happen every now and again. Submitting is also not really a big deal as near as I can tell as guys quit all the time. It seems way more rare for a guy to get to the ropes or counter out than to just have them quit. Double and even triple team submissions are a thing as well as a whole side of the match will quit at the same time. I think what I find most frustrating about lucha is that their conventions could easily be altered to make for interesting concepts but they don't really do that. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goodear Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Ok, Negros Casas homework is beginning. I'm watching a match between him and Titan from January. Casas legit looks like a guy that would murder you. Like, the dude from The Crow would have hired him to kill the Crow, if the 'kill the bird' plan hadn't worked. What the fuck did I just type? Watch this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmdkoQSuOAg 2:30 in Maximo and Casas have a great comedy wrestling exchange culminating in the most manly of handshakes 7:30 in there is a lovely pratfall pinning series which just looks like the most fun ever 10:00 in and Casas gets caught in Porky's orbit and seconds later has the absolutely funniest 'too fat to Irish whip' segment I have ever seen Then watch anything with Casas and Rush beating the SNOT out of each other. It is the SAME GUY! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaedmc Posted March 2, 2014 Author Share Posted March 2, 2014 I wonder how far we can get Negro Casas in this thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piranesi Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Big Show vs. Negro Casas is shaping up to be an early crucible for the soul of the board. Which means it's shaping up to be an early soul squash for Jae. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaedmc Posted March 2, 2014 Author Share Posted March 2, 2014 Worrying about poll outcomes are for marks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tromatagon Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Sounds like a guy who realizes Ziggler isn't making it out of the first round 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piranesi Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Worrying about poll outcomes are for marks. Yes. Kill whatever is left of that part of you and thrive in the cold vacuum of absolute soul death. FULFILL THE PROPHECY!!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goodear Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 I wonder how far we can get Negro Casas in this thing. Round 2? I mean Big Show has had a down year and always has the anti-giant bias working against him but ain't no way this board is letting Roman Reigns lose in the second round. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goodear Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Sounds like a guy who realizes Ziggler isn't making it out of the first round He might because Ibushi ain't great and people might have no idea who he is but Seven is going to run through whoever gets through like Meng through a jawbone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 I wonder how far we can get Negro Casas in this thing. Round 2? I mean Big Show has had a down year and always has the anti-giant bias working against him but ain't no way this board is letting Roman Reigns lose in the second round. People should be suggesting specific matches right now, posting said matches, analyzing said matches, and using peer pressure to ostracize the people that don't watch them. Round 2 even is still a ways away. Just being hostile isn't enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Fresh Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 You know how if you go to a show that has a one-night tournament, they'll normally book a "bonus" match before the final, to cleanse the pallate before the big match? Maybe that's where to putt the much-discussed Miz/Anderson/Richards triple threat? You know, for kids? This is a brilliant idea. Or do it like after round 2 when all our tempers are up and we're spitting fire so we can all have a laugh and be cool again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Fresh Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 Bummed that Samoa Joe and ACH didn't make the tournament. I understand why, but I got a soft spot for both guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goodear Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 The homework continues... If pro wrestling was figure skating, Volador Jr would be trying to get all his points through degree of difficulty. He works a very high paced, very athletic style which can almost be too much sometimes. I think he needs to be reigned in a bit by someone with more of a mat game like Casas or Virus (Averno seems to fit that bill based off what I'm watching). Dude could totally be Sin Cara XIV for WWE if that was in his plans. Can I just mention that lucha would be way more enjoyable if their referees could move at a pace that matched its wrestlers? It's like Frank Morrell referees all over the damn place when they need a Mark Curtis. La Sombra seems similar but way less polished to me. I was left feeling unfulfilled despite his athletic skills as he seems to get lost on his feet a bunch. His lionsault miss into a back flip splash seems really neat the first time you see it, but sure gets annoying after just the second time. Anyone got any Adam Cole that ain't from 2009? Because he just looks like Indy Nerd #1,933 from that stuff. So went looking for some Mochizuki and came across Ayumi Kurihara & Masaaki Mochizuki vs Kana & Genki Horiguchi and thought "great, more Kana!" so hooray for that. It was kind of interesting actually because it made Kana show off some more range than I got from her joshi stuff. There she just pounds people into pudding. Here she has to work underneath a bit and sell more for Mochizuki. Its nice to see that she can do both. Then stuff happens with an elastic band and I am so confused. So very confused. Ayumi gets beat up for a while and Kana throws out this wicked awesome German suplex with a leg grapevine component. Mochizuki gets back into the match and starts kicking the stuffing out of Kana in the process. Kana comes back and Mochizuki does that thing where he absorbs kicks to the chest like it ain't no thing. So Kana kicks him in the head Ayumi also looks good in this but Genki seems sort of worthless. More kicks and stuff and Ayumi gets the pin off a hammerlock exploder (?). Mochizuki kind of faded into the woodwork here since he had a decent partner. Kana came off as the biggest deal though even in defeat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DylanWaco Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 Best thing Mochizuki did last year was have an awesome five minute match with Fujiwara where he was the lesser performer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tromatagon Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 I'd like to think the board is cool enough to vote Ibushi over Ziggler for DDT antics alone Don't let me down you fucking fucks 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LooseCannon Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 If ya want me to vote for one of dem foreigners, find me a good promo in English on Youtube. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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