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Purotopia General Discussion: 2017!


Kevin Wilson

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This made me want to watch a Bison Smith match, and I found out he tagged with Scorpio. I put in "Bison Smith Scorpio" in the Youtube bar and scroll down. There, I found "Joey Ryan uses his Penis to flip Mr. 450 which forces him to give Bestia 666 a Power Bomb", "Joey Ryan uses a Lollipop covered in Thumbtacks during a Ladder Match at DDT Pro Wrestling", and "Joey Ryan vs. Hornswaggle"... all from an account labeled Joey Ryan. 

I think I'm just gonna watch Kobashi vs. Bison instead. 

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention "Joey Ryan's Penis is Stronger than Barbwire"

EDIT II: Bison's mohawk was straight-up "bass player in the Varukers" level of a hairstyle. And that claw slam was indeed off the chain

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Here it is in case anybody else wants to watch it. Not an epic by any means as it wraps up in eight minutes, but it's fun. Bison busts out a bunch of neat offense -- at one point he does a frickin' Styles Clash -- and there's a lot of suspense over the IRON CLAW~! Kobashi has a hole in his elbow which is uncomfortable to look at; you think he'd wrap that up if he was getting in the ring. 

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There were signs he might get a title win toward the end...he was the last guy to ever pin Misawa,  just a few weeks before his death iirc.  Him and Saito still hold the record for the longest GHC tag title run ever. He seemed to lose his push after Misawa died and then passed away himself not too long after.  Shame as he would have made a great opponent for Go and Sugiura.  His 8 minute slobberknocker with Kobashi from 2002 (which I suspect is the match Curt just watched?)  was always my favourite from him. 

 

Edit: oh okay there we go. Not only was it the right match but he was also good enough to post it.  And FTR it's not a Styles Clash when Bison does it,  it's "the Bisontennial"  (no joke). 

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THIS was a BLAST. I've never had much use for Makabe but he not only gets juice in a NOAH ring but lets Kobashi fuck his shit up royally. And I never knew he wrestled in NOAH either! Honda's such a great underdog partner, you know when he gets you in the clutch you're gonna feel it, but it feels like you can still overwhelm him if the opportunity strikes. Kobashi, meanwhile, bangs his head into a concrete-hard table like five times and Takayama and Makabe get to double up on him on multiple occasions to make it feel like he's done for. Really, really good tag here. 

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Also topic for discussion: feuds/storylines in Japan that you most regret never getting a satisfying conclusion to.  I'm thinking specifically of guys who never "got their win"  over some of their arch rivals.  I'll cite off the top my head: Marufuji never beating Misawa,  Kea never beating Mutoh (at least not in singles, that I know of),  and more subtly Manabu Soya getting hurt before he and Shiozaki could really get their program going in 2012 AJPW.  Also I'm no UWFi scholar but I know Takada always avoided working much with Tamura,  correct?  

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16 hours ago, Belgian_Waffle said:

Also I'm no UWFi scholar but I know Takada always avoided working much with Tamura,  correct?  

UWF-I pushed Tamura hard thru 92 and 93, put him over Yamazaki and foreigners, but fed him to Takada for a Budokan main event that sold out. Never did anything with that feud thereafter. Sad. General consensus was that Tamura was too small to be getting big wins over Takada and later Maeda in RINGS. With a skillset like his it is moot. imo.

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It's not a case of a guy never getting a win--nor is it an original choice--but Akiyama not beating Kobashi for the GHC in the dome is pretty much in my own personal dictionary under "unsatisfying". 

For those who have seen Miyahara/Ishikawa from this weekend...

Spoiler

Disregarding match quality for a sec--it's good!; ok, that's enough for now--it did strike me that they really spent all of Ishikawa's big moves, often several times. Aces kick out of stuff, obviously, and Miyahara is young enough that they're still trying to canonize him on that god-tier. So, I'm not complaining. But I am curious, as there aren't a ton of credible challengers he hasn't beaten already, and now I'm not sure how you make a rematch between these two as tense as it probably should be. Miyahara absorbed what felt like ten credible finishers, and then won with very little (relatively speaking). I guess we assume he'll wrestle Kojima next; and while I'm (hypothetically) excited to see it (even if Kojima/Suwama disapointed for... reasons) there isn't a great deal of drama as to who will win. After that? He just finished an eight-defense, 464-day run earlier this year, which (while absolutely the right thing to do, for present and especially future business) doesn't leave a ton of fresh defenses. Doering is the only guy who springs to mind. 

Anyway this isn't a question or cogent argument, really, just a random observation. And if All Japan and New Japan are prepared to work together, that would benefit his second reign a great deal, with matches against Ishii, Goto, MiSu, etc. Basically anyone below the IWGP tier. He did lose his debut match in Kensuke Office to SANADA, so maybe that's something. And it being Kensuke Office, maybe Nakajima--no longer champ himself--could be made to work, if NOAH is amendable. 

Anyway. That was a lot of words to essentially say "I wonder who he will wrestle and am excited to see because he's good"; also, as we've established, it would be cool if All Japan had a deeper main event scene.  

 

 

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In the old days you protect the top guys.  They weren't going to let Marufuji pin Misawa back then.  Noah only really booked Jun to lose to Juniors like Ogawa and Marufuji. Taue to Ogawa in a defense. 

Personally I never liked Noah's booking. Faulty at times and the promotion only really survived on good matches and Kobashi and Misawa's draw power and the Ntv deal keeping them afloat.

They failed to make an ace all the way up to when the old ltd was closed down.

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Marufuji was pushed pretty much as a heavy for awhile there, though. He won the Global Strongest Cup or whatever it's called by pinning Morishima in the finals, and he had not one but two highly competitive title matches with Misawa, including one where he ate a Tiger Driver 91 in order to finally do the job. He has that classic Shiranu Kai nearfall in the Misawa/Ogawa vs Marufuji/KENTA tag title match that I hope everybody is still rewatching every year or so and acknowledging how well it has held up. He got hurt for a long time after and then came back to compete in the junior division and feud with the NJPW juniors, which only really served to build up Devitt into a superstar rather than anyone NOAH-affiliated, all while the promotion focused on building up Shiozaki instead of Marufuji and KENTA as the true successor to Misawa and Kobashi...except Misawa passed away and Kobashi became too broken down for main events before either could pass the torch. So to say Marufuji besting Misawa wasn't where they were seriously considering going for awhile would be incorrect, I think. If anything I think Marufuji and Morishima in 2006 were NOAH's version of Bret Hart and Lex Luger in 1994 WWF, only Misawa went with the wrong guy whereas Vince went with the right one.  And he probably went with the wrong guy for the very reason you cited (size), but I think if enough time passed he would have had his heavyweight title run sooner and would have ended up pinning Misawa. 

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On 8/29/2017 at 1:05 PM, Belgian_Waffle said:

Also topic for discussion: feuds/storylines in Japan that you most regret never getting a satisfying conclusion to.  I'm thinking specifically of guys who never "got their win"  over some of their arch rivals.  I'll cite off the top my head: Marufuji never beating Misawa,  Kea never beating Mutoh (at least not in singles, that I know of),  and more subtly Manabu Soya getting hurt before he and Shiozaki could really get their program going in 2012 AJPW.  Also I'm no UWFi scholar but I know Takada always avoided working much with Tamura,  correct?  

I'm still bitter about Sasuke bailing o nthe Michinoku/NJPW Juniors feud for Sekigun/NJ Juniors v. Kaintei DX/League of Penises!

We were denied such greatness!

James

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Marufuji at the time was roughly 200 pounds. Still very light compared to every other heavyweight guy. Certainly so in a business where workers had to be past 226 pounds in able to get any top world heavyweight belt.  I also remember people talking about his weight in Japan to skeptic disbelief. Marufuji vs Kenta would be a junior bout in every other company at the time.

They also let the juniors win the Ghc Hw title via flash-pins and not their finishes. If they wanted to have him or Ogawa pin Kobashi or Misawa, they would had. They simply booked it not to happen.

If Baba was alive back then and was in control of Noah somehow or they all remained in Ajpw,  he wouldn't even put Marufuji or Ogawa in the Hw title chasing. It's all Misawa's idea to push legit Juniors in the Ghc Hw title chase. A suggestion he gaven to Jun.

Current day Ghc Hw division is basically a open-weight division where Juniors are equal and preferred. 

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Yes, history has been very kind to Marufuji.  A lot of people really crapped on him at the time.  But to be fair, Marufuji's style has gotten better with age.  He was always a "tricky" worker, but now it's perceived as wise and clever.  

My apologies for simply summarizing what the posters above have stated so well and at length, but to me, what always bothered me about NOAH during that ten-year or so period is that there never seemed to be a legitimate passing of the torch.  That's it, in a nutshell.  Even with Morishima, I can recall them waiting too long and the fans giving him a lukewarm response.  I can't really recall all the minute details, but how a company had so much talent yet still managed to not progress forward was extremely frustrating to watch.  Of course, all wrestling promoters like to throw out that we as fans don't understand the backstage squabbles and injuries, and there is some truth to that, but one thing we do know is bad booking.  The slow and painful decline in ticket sales backs that up.  

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as Cewsh pointed out his blog (a great write-up of Kobashi's reign), when they tried to do a passing of the torch they messed up because between Kobashi vs. Rikio 1 and vs. Rikio 2, they had Rikio doing nothing but mid-card tag matches. It would be like doing a switch to Cesaro now; maybe the right guy in a certain light, but not the right time at all.

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Looking at the actual AJPW roster and holy shit do they have nobody under contract. It's finally time for Fuchi to get his TC shot. He's waited long enough!

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1 hour ago, Ryan said:

Looking at the actual AJPW roster and holy shit do they have nobody under contract. It's finally time for Fuchi to get his TC shot. He's waited long enough!

I've actually wanted to see this as a novelty defence for a long time now.  He can't go like he could 10 years ago but I'm sure he and Miyahara could totally fill a dramatic 20 minutes headlining a smaller show.  

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4 hours ago, sevendaughters said:

as Cewsh pointed out his blog (a great write-up of Kobashi's reign), when they tried to do a passing of the torch they messed up because between Kobashi vs. Rikio 1 and vs. Rikio 2, they had Rikio doing nothing but mid-card tag matches. It would be like doing a switch to Cesaro now; maybe the right guy in a certain light, but not the right time at all.

That write-up is a great nostalgia trip. Admittedly, there are some matches I'd wholesale forgotten there. I actually went back and watched the MiSu match, which, funny thing about that, the Gotch piledriver was hit midmatch, and treated as inconsequential. The rare move that's gotten more protected as time's gone on. 

Regarding Rikio: The thing that really sticks out to me is how--and the writers point this out--he seemed even at the time to be the least over of NOAH's potential ascendant stars. (Morishima and, if we're ok with hand waving size concerns for a bit, KENTA and Marafuji. I don't remember Shiozaki being on that level yet.) Maybe NOAH had reason to believe he drew well, or that Japanese fans were taking to him. But I never got that impression, while watching from this side of the ocean.

What also struck me at the time, and still does, is that he was significantly older than all of them. I wonder how much of a factor that was? As in: If he's ever going to be a main eventer, we have to move now. He's only three years younger than Akiyama(!), while Morishima is six years younger than Rikio himself, and KENTA and Marafuji are eight and seven years younger than him, respectively. Of course there would have been problems with all of those guys, but maybe it would have been better to stick your flag in the ground with a truly young talent, endure early crowd rejection, and maybe mint a generational ace. The Okada strategy, basically.

That said, I realize early/mid-30's is pretty young in puro terms. Naito is 35, Omega is 33, and no one is complaining that New Japan has missed on them. Rikio, at 32, was well within range for winning his first major title. But so was Jun! I'm never letting that go.

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