WRESTLING ON THE INTERNET NOT FROM THE NOW

[odessasteps]

#1 for me is DiBiase’s Black Glove.

[Contentious C]

So I watched more stuff; I continue to be an idiot.

I decided to revisit the two most famous matches of the original Super J-Cup, Sasuke's awesome pairings with Liger & Benoit.  I don't think I'd seen either of these in close to 15 years.  I feel like I got them both wrong, and I feel like maybe a lot of others do, too.

Liger vs. Great Sasuke is such a good example of prime Liger (I have yet to find a version of the allegedly superior 7/8/94 rematch streaming anywhere).  On this night, Sasuke might have spent the most time working great matches, but I think Liger turns in the single best performance.  I think when I first reviewed this, my big worry was that the arm work goes nowhere, which was...well, incredibly stupid.  Of course it goes nowhere; not every match involves breaking a body part.  That only works in VPW2 for the N64.  But all the early control and submission spots they work through do such a wonderful job of setting the stage for what's coming.  It's worth noting that the J-Cup was, according to Wikipedia, Sasuke's idea.  That sets off Liger's domination in this match as a great message to a guy who failed the NJPW entrance exam four years prior.  "You don't belong here.  You never belonged here.  All you toads from FMW and M-Pro and everywhere else have been eliminated by now.  You can't hang with us, even if you can jump out of the building, and I'm going to make sure everyone knows it.  Go back to your dinky promotion and pretend your male cheerleader gimmick is cool."  Liger just goes full on rudo and tries his best to snap Sasuke in two.  

The funny thing is, Sasuke sells the arm great - he's still clutching the damn thing after his Asai moonsault to the floor, before they move on to the bigger spots!  Me = idiot.

I think all the big spots in this are actually better than the ones in the Final; maybe it's because it's Liger, and there was no (or less of a) language barrier, and they do a nicer job of settling into the big bombs at the end, with less need for setting them up or transitioning into them a bit roughly.  Everything looks a little crisper, even if it's all the stuff you'd expect them to do.  Of course, the one caveat to that is the finish, but even then, Liger just rolls with it in the greatest "chicken salad out of chicken shit" bit of improvisation we're likely to see.  The blown springboard just makes his point for him, that Sasuke is a poseur, until Liger gets pinned and isn't going to the Final in the tournament he's effectively hosting.  

______

Sasuke vs. Wild Pegasus hasn't quite held up, I don't think.  The Doc/Kawada match over in Budokan probably was better that night.  It seems like Benoit & Sasuke had a hard time getting on the same page until they decide to go for broke.  The early time-killing grappling looks pretty loose, where Sasuke seems like he's standing there, letting Benoit do what he wants.  And they run the same lariat transition something like five times in the match (including the first two being the exact same rope-running sequence that leads to Sasuke eating the lariat), making it fairly evident that they weren't quite able to communicate effectively. 

Once they take everything to the floor and start trying to murder each other, it's pretty great, though.  Benoit's springboard elbow to the outside is something I could watch over and over and still not quite grok how he did it.  He bounces, then he's just suddenly airborne and clobbering Sasuke.  The only spot that could have gone better is the big flying dropkick, where Sasuke's bump was just unnecessary.  It's too bad - for Sasuke's ability to walk when/if he's 60, anyway - that Benoit didn't try to move that to somewhere where there was still padding; the shot straight to the concrete and how badly Sasuke limps afterwards is just...ugh.  More cringe-inducing than eye-popping.  There's 'wow' crazy and then there's just crazy-crazy.

But overall, I'm not sure this match tells as much of a story as the semi-final.  What it does make apparent, though, is how prone to bias fans were (or are).  I don't think for a second this is as good as the 2 Liger/Ohtani matches from 96/97, nor is it as good as the 1/96 Sammy/Ohtani match (though I need to rewatch all 3, at some point).  The Ultimo Dragon/Rey Misterio match from WAR is also better for sheer, spot-for-spot wow factor.  But, there was that point in time where the goal of watching something was to cram as much footage into one unit of transfer as possible, and shows like this made it out to a lot of people.  This has the legendary status it has because A) Meltzer said so, and B) it penetrated the market effectively when doing so was exceedingly difficult (compared to now).  It's that show that says, "Oh, everyone's seen that," and, since the bulk of fans won't take the time to contextualize matches that are effectively better, it's easy to point to a match like this one and think of it as one of the best 5 or 10 matches in the company's history. At least then, more people participate in the conversation, and the consensus hardens accordingly.  Maybe it's still that high in the echelon.  But, I doubt it.  It's great, and it's close, but it's outside of that range for me.  Hopefully as more stuff ends up online, some of those conversations will change.

______

But, often the conversations don't change.  Great example of this is El Samurai vs. Koji Kanemoto from the 6/5/97 BoSJ final.  I'd never seen this before.  What a disappointment.  The first half of the match is at least entertaining, and there's a palpable hate between these two (it feels sometimes like that was all Kanemoto was good for, and the only person who didn't realize it was him).  If they'd stuck to that formula, instead of what happens in the last third of the match, it might've been better.  But wow, when the big spots rain, it's like raining cinder blocks.  The reverse rana is another 'sick rather than amazing' moment, and you wonder what part of Sammy's childhood he can't remember anymore after that.  Hopefully it was, I don't know, being stung by a bunch of bees or something.  And then of course they just keep hammering the crap out of each other without doing nearly enough to respect the accumulation of nutso garbage they'd thrown each other's way.  Add to that how sloppy the actual spots themselves are (the reverse DDTs just look awful), and one wonders how this was ever thought of as "great", let alone some kind of all-time classic.  

It's really a simple notion to see how matches like this work (or don't).  Imagine it's clipped.  Imagine that one big moment is taken out, and it's cut back together so that the transitions on offense still make logical sense.  Is it a better match without that one famous thing?  This is a cut-and-dried case where, yeah, the match would have been significantly better without tossing something so big out there, since it gets glossed over so quickly.  Yet another case of "someone shilled this, and other just echoed the message".  This is barely even a "good" match.

[J.T.]

The Loaded Mask vs. Loaded Boot debate begins.

Yeah.  Loaded mask spots are fucking awesome!

[J.T.]

Iron Sheik wins via loaded boot.

[AxB]

The 2012 Royal Rumble match, held at the 2012 Royal Rumble event:

Nice thumbnail, you stupid idiots.

[The Idiot King]

Boy, that Randy Orton/Mick Foley Backlash match is great. Everything Randy Orton is good at is on display there. Just game and giving and selling and obnoxious and instead of being the Deadly Viper Who Hears Voices, he's just a natural, smug shithead willing to die all over the place who wins in the end, not because he cheated but because he could hang in there even if he has the Top 8 Overall Worst Tattoos In Wrestling. 

["Stone Cold" Steve Austin]

 

[Web Conn]

 

[Guest Edwin]

 

[Guest Edwin]

The Great Khali vs. Oney Lorcan

[J.T.]

Happy birthday, Kerry Von Erich.

RIP, homie.

[Guest Edwin]

Must watch if you're a fan of mean old brawlers punching each other in the face and bleeding:
 

 

[Curt McGirt]

If you haven't seen Murdoch vs. Kox watch it NOW. Trust. 

[J.T.]

RIP Les Thornton.

 

["Stone Cold" Steve Austin]

On 2/2/2019 at 11:24 PM, Edwin said:

The Great Khali vs. Oney Lorcan

Better quality.

 

[Kang]

 

[The Green Meanie]

Monsoon Classic posted an 8-man tag match from early 1999 of the J.O.B. Squad vs. The Hardy Boyz/Too Much......without Scotty. Who is this Kevin Quinn guy?
 

 

[odessasteps]

11 minutes ago, The Green Meanie said:

Monsoon Classic posted an 8-man tag match from early 1999 of the J.O.B. Squad vs. The Hardy Boyz/Too Much......without Scotty. Who is this Kevin Quinn guy?

He was a midwest indy guy, teamed a lot with Daniels.

[Ace]

He was also the chief recruiter and original coach in the old Inoki Dojo.

[Guest Edwin]

Here's another Kevin Quinn match with an unexpected result.

Yeah, Quinn was one of the old guys from 90's - 00's and trained a lot of the indy people that made a name for themselves in the mid 00's we all watched and loved.

[Guest Edwin]

Manly match. Really good match with an amazing performance from Gulak.

[Pete]

DADDY-O.

[KidKash202]

This reminds me of one of the first tapes I ordered from @HighSpots

It was called Michinoku Pro: Spots.

It was a tape that shows various moves from the stars of M-Pro and UWF. So many of the clips there were on the video.

This took me back!

Some great talent here man.

60fps / UWF3: Lucha Libre Big Aerial Festival ~ Excitement Aerial Killing Method 100 Shots! (1994)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OyFp4Uj154&t=2707s

[clintthecrippler]

Nothing to see here, just Bob Roop, Boris Malenko, RON WRIGHT, Ron Garvin, and Bob Orton Jr. exposing the inner workings of the wrestling industry in 1979.

Wait, WHAT?!?

 

 

[odessasteps]

I always thought it was interesting how guys like Roop and Garvin and Orton worked for numerous opposition groups, but were welcomed back to places like Florida and Crockett.