John E. Dynamite

https://youtu.be/TyaAkPfH8Pk?si=u687cvky9dpKo6R_

This is Dynamite Kid's TV debut - truth be told I'm not a huge DK fan or anything, always been in the camp that the Tiger Mask series was overrated and as much as I appreciate his tag runs in WWF and AJPW I was always popping harder for Matilda. I'll tell you what I do like - I like psychologically unique matches. And World of Sport is very very good at providing those - when the mid-00's Hero/Cabana/Nigel/Claudio/Danielson/Quackenbush contingent were studying at the altar of Johnny Saint, they weren't just ripping off the wristlock counters, they were also building their midcard matches in Midlothian around weird little ideas like the one seen here. This match is almost entirely built around Dynamite Kid's ability to hit a resorte. There's an obvious flaw to this as the resorte isn't an offensive maneuver and DK doesn't really generate a lot of offense off of it. But Alan Dennsion (who I've always enjoyed) and his short, old strongman gimmick is a great foil for it. He sells the frustration of not being able to take the Kid off his feet without getting too heelish or whiny about it, so when he figured out how to wear down DK enough for him to land flat on his back, or when he figures out he can just whip him into the corner, it feels like a cheerable accomplishment. They do a lot of stuff here that works real well despite the face vs. face dynamic, not just the ratcheting frustration but also the strength vs. speed stuff, Dennison correctly choosing which of the Kid's offense not to sell, and the big injury finish where (through no fault of Dennison's) DK throws himself throat-first into the top rope. This is an effective showcase for a 17 year old Tom Bellington but I'd argue it's a better showcase for the kind of stuff World of Sport TV is uniquely good at. KENT WALTON, first of all, was really on his game at the desk. And you can't help but be jealous of how the crowd is conditioned. They're whip smart when it comes to the technical stuff but they're still along for the ride emotionally. I love how they pop when Dennison reveals the age of his opponent in the post-match promo. Kinda makes you want to see what'll happen the next time this young man is on TV.

Alright, let's get weird. I posted this is in Matches Thread months ago but I was just thinking about it the other day and I've got to properly foist this upon somebody. It's the kind of thing one rarely gets to witness, and certainly a match that helped me understand the artform more. Arena GDL 3rd Anniversary - Kid's Division Exhibition Match https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ca4JyaHcMo

Funny little match. It feels like two singles matches being viewed in parallel instead of one entire handicap match. There's almost no double-team offense, no quick tags, no exploitation of the ruleset or (wo)man advantage as a means to win until the very end. The first sequence with Unagi lasts awhile - for some reason, they go with tentative shoot-style matwork and they keep it realistic. Like one of those old Minoru Suzuki in Pancrase matches where he's toying with somebody to make a show out of it. Like Masakatsu Funaki against some Dutch guy with a bad blonde fade choosing to kneebar him in the ninth minute instead of the third The Oka half is consistent babyface fire bashing itself against Hashimoto's brick wall and it feels a lot more like a proper pro wrestling match. Lotta screaming on Oka's part. Chippy one-counts. Stikes getting no-sold. The good basic stuff you expect to get when you put on a match like this. There's a slow, scream-heavy, fighting spirit attempt at a crucifix pin from Oka to Hashimoto that felt really effective and fresh, and Oka's stockiness in no way gets in the way of her technique. I'm impressed. Unagi's energy picks up once she gets to uncork her more traditional offense of facebusters and legdrops, and is given an adequate amount of time to struggle against an enthusiastically applied wrist-clutch abdominal stretch. But even though Hashimoto is selling for and working with Unagi in a way that paints her well ahead of Oka, there's this undercurrent of bullyish disrespect that Unagi doesn't really have the skills or fire to respond to. This is obvious in some of the transitional groundwork but laid starkly bare in the strike exchanges. So when Oka tags in for her final run and throws a series of dropkicks that slowly get sold more and more (from about 5% to 40%), and when she gets a real nearfall off of a body press, it really feels like something is happening. Like progress is being made. Things break down into the expected two-on-one with mere minutes left to go. Oka gets a steady run of almost-believable rollup nearfalls before getting maimed by a couple of Hashimoto lariats, saved by Unagi when she should have left things well enough alone. So we get one last, badly-needed bit of handicap match madness when Hashimoto takes it home by powerbombing Unagi on top of Oka and pinning them both. Which feels like the kind of finish the match was naturally leading towards. Nobody looked bad in this one, but clearly this would have been better served as a Hashimoto vs. Oka match, or even a full on tag match with Hashimoto's regular Team 200KG partner Yuu. One of the reasons I say this is because this match didn't (or rather hasn't) led to such singles match, which is a shame. But now that I've seen half of that match, I'll keep my eyes open for it if it ever comes to be.

so is foie gras. it's french and expensive and worth it and i shun their haters. Rudy 2023 Highlight Reel of Dudes Going "Actually Nah I Don't Want To Do This" will be the finest thing produced by the league all year.

How's that working out for Draymond? The Warriors? The NBA? Rudy Gobert's throat and Yusuf Nurkic's face?

If Colby had won, the UFC 100% would have made him sit until after next November for pure propaganda/marketing purposes.

Josh Emmett just saved America and I was in the toilet for it. If Paddy loses it will be the funniest thing ever.

Since we're speculating, maybe Kenny thought the diverticulitis was just a complication from hernia that failed to heal. Does one often lead to the other?

It absolutely happens in real sports. Real Madrid and Man City just closed out their Champion's League "blocks" at 6-0-0. I'm a sumo fan who watched Hakuho go 15-0 half a dozen times (out of his career 16 perfect tournaments out of 70 competed in as yokozuna, which admittedly is nuts) They set up Briscoe and Lethal coming in at 0 so that their upcoming match actually has stakes. Didn't most of us watch Honma-mania?

Did Pepper ever wrestle under one of his other names in AEW before debuting as The Blade?

Yota Tsuji, who is king of the world and everything. Ren Narita, who is ready to rise up out of his mini-Shibata role and *god help me if they fuck him up offa this House of Torture shit*. Yuya Uemura, who had a damn fine run in the states. I would by far put Shota Umino at the bottom of those ranks but that might just be me. Obviously there's a lot of in-house gaijin on the come-up. I still have no idea how WAR DOGS Bullet Club is gonna break, outside of It Ain't Finlay. I'm glad I watched some Tag League shows cause yknow who's really putting it together? Hikuleo. He's being asked to do more and he's doing it. Speaking of NOAH, the best pure Young Lion I've seen in awhile is Ryohei Oiwa and he's doing his excursion as Kiyomia's understudy under the green lights. Very much one to keep an eye one.

I got no idea what you're in to so I'm gonna go with some good time retro sports entertainment. An Introduction to the Genius of Joyce Grable, the Funk-meets-Hokuto shit-talking shit-kicking down-home beauty queen. JOYCE GRABLE vs. PENNY MITCHELL - WWF 10/16/1982, Philadelphia Spectrum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i0W6N9Ty0A This is a match about being a fuckhead. Not just Joyce being a fuckhead, but longtime New York area babyface referee Dick Woehrle being an even bigger fuckhead. Let's just say the two of them don't get along and and that Dick has a shtick. A little less workrate heavy than Joyce being a tag-focused brawler in AWA or Mid South, a little more New York-y character driven, but the work is still rock solid. Commentary by Vince Jr. + I believe Pat Patterson (who's doing his own character work swooning for Penny). Note: this particular YouTube channel is a great resource for 80's women's wrestling. It is also mad creepy, so avert your eyes from match descriptions and comments. If only I could inline...

We have reason to believe that you see + deal with a significantly shittier part of the online wrestling community than the rest of us do.

Jon Moxley's BattlARTS shirt.

I'm gonna very politely ask to be shoehorned into this if you're all still rockin' an odd number of participants. I found an old Google doc of good weird matches I had kicking around + I've been throwing darts at Roy Lucier's board again. This would be a healthy way to spend my time.

I once dreamed of a fighter coming out to a lavishly-produced, Frank Sinatra + Antonio Morelli Las Vegas-to-the-bone crooner cover of "Taste The Pain". That nasty discordant tritone is equally the realm of nu-metal and West Side Story, y'know. I still think of what that song's hook could be with a big, brassy band behind it, only to bring it down and swing on the verses. Dana White reads the boards. Book it.

For real, that's the only Rousey comeback I'd be curious about.

oh my lord that wasn't a choke or a neck crank, Meisha was on her MOUTH vylinz

Somebody in this audience musta sacrificed 1,000 crocodiles to Huitzilopochtli during the tailgate.

Dear God is the Spirit of Violence alive in Austin right now.

I'm actually paying attention to the Tag League off the lure of the CMLL guys and the the Yung Musks + Oiwa. Zandokan's been good for a minute. Dude doesn't even have a cagematch page, that's the state of lucha libre awareness. At least NJPW knows what's up. I got back into CMLL early last year off the strength of the Soberano vs. Templario feud and at first I thought Soberano was the rudo. Apparently he's more-or-less turned in Arena Mexico and I'm very pleased to hear it. He might be the best guy they've got.

It's good to see you talk about all this stuff, Curt, cause no small part of it is dead-on where I'm at right now. Guilt, bad psychiatrists, nasal drip nonsense... I put every aspect of my personal and professional life in the same place. I'm the center and I'm not holding. I let an addiction that I've romanticized (shit, professionalized) and a deeply negative personality define my entire adult life and I've been sitting around clueless how to act on it because all of my emotional resources either drifted away or up-and-left. And this withdrawal stuff is stupid - I don't know how to articulate the physical aspect of it properly. Psychologically is probably worse. Sober, I just stare at walls. Maybe doomscroll. With my baseline of 10 standard drinks then every game on my shelf becomes fun, every longform internet video is insightful, food tastes good, I can text people, at least. I can't regularly watch pro wrestling sober. It's why I dropped the poll I tried to keep running after DEAN passed. I'd skim IMPACT and NJPW on the DVR, indies and lucha on YouTube, figure out which AEW matches I could barely remember, and sort em all up while getting loaded every time. I stopped doing that months ago as an attempt to tone it down but it wasn't enough. To make a long story short last month I ran the biggest bender of my life and blew well past a fifth-a-day, every day for over two weeks. Called out of work. No outside contact. Some people just live like that, and there is no way I want to be that kind of person. But that's where it's been going for over half my life (and I am not that old) so I guess I'll do something about it. A much better set of professionals are in front of me then whatever the fuck I was grasping at over the summer. I have purpose and a plan. But I don't really know how I'm supposed to deal with the boredom, loneliness and anxiety. And the guilt/shame/loathing? I don't have any idea how to overcome it. But we move forward regardless.

This is exactly what The Devil would say. My casual fan people have been asking me all these questions this week and the "news cycle" as it exists has prevented me from finding much joy in engaging w/ the good ol' IWC, so I'll say this; Five consecutive singles matches from [everyone in the CC field] is balm. If there was ever a time I needed people to just shut the fuck up and pro-wrestle, it might be now. The man who inspired this thought is, of course, Rush.

I don't think there's anything to apologize for, I think the fact that they aren't interested in the veneration of the blockbuster blueprint is a huge factor in their success. They get deserved credit for not pandering to the broadest possible fanbase, and I think it starts with the fact that they have no shame in making video games that *play like video games*.